On Monday two men shot an 18-year-old to death on a street corner in Las Vegas. Tuesday in Idaho, a state police officer was shot in the head and killed. The next day 28-year-old Damon Damar Ingram was gunned down while walking his dog in the nation's capital. On Thursday officers arrested 49-year-old Frances Boice in rural South Dakota. Police say she shot and killed her 51-year-old husband in upstate New York before flee-ing to the heartland. Welcome to a week in the United States, one of the most free and violent countries in the world. Where people carry weapons to protect themselves from the other people who own somewhere between 200 and 250 million firearms according to PSR online. And since about 40 percent of those guns were obtained illegally, most are probably going to be used for illegal purposes. So just think, there are 100 million guns out there that could kill or injure you. [STEP FORWARD] – one step In order to reduce the number of guns used by people to commit these appalling crimes, we should do three things. Change the current laws governing the process of purchasing guns, make gun manufacturers responsible for their products, and show pri-vate citizens that gun control can be aided with their help [MOVE TO RIGHT] To begin, the gun laws must be changed. In 1999 there were nine school shoot-ings, thirty people have been killed and seventy-five wounded. That is thirty people too many, for a problem that could be solved with a simple passage of a law. When large numbers of people start to die we try to find a cause. The cause of these problems is ob-vious, and when an apparent cause is found, people of the United States should try to rec-tify that problem. But why hasn't the legislative branch done anything to rectify the problem? Maybe because lobbyists for gun rights have inundated our congressmen with large amounts of money, something to the tune of eight million dollars between 1997 and 1998. Handgun...