A stricter review of people who want to own guns

The Philippine National Police has revised its regulations and is now allowing ordinary citizens to own semi-automatic rifles.

This has sparked debate among those for or against the revision. Those on one side claim that doing so will increase incidents of crime and abuse of firearms, but those on the other say nothing of that sort will happen.

Personally, we see nothing wrong with allowing responsible gun owners access to bigger and better guns, whether these are for their own protection or even for recreational activities.

We also don’t see the Philippines become a version of the Wild West where everyone has a semi-automatic rifle instead of a six-shooter because not everyone can afford them, or the requirements to keep or carry them around.

It’s also unfair to automatically conclude that a responsible gun owner’s behavior will change --meaning they will get violent-- once they get a semi-automatic rifle.

As to this allowing “bad guys” and criminals better access to long guns; these types never needed the PNP’s permission to get long firearms in the first place.

However, what we are asking for is a stricter review of people who want to own guns, no matter what kind of firearm they want to get, now that the police are allowing civilians to own semi-automatic rifles.

There must be more stringent screening of people who want to buy guns, because, to be honest, not everyone who wants a gun deserves to have one.

We only need to look at what is happening in the US to see what happens when people who don’t deserve to have a semi-automatic rifle --or any kind of gun for that matter-- get their hands on one.

There is a shooting in a major US city almost every day. There are frequent mass shootings in malls, schools, or universities where more than one person is killed by someone unhinged yet was able to legally get his hands on a gun and ammunition.

That goes without saying that we don’t want that to happen here. And while there are cases of people getting shot every day here as a result of crime there has, thankfully, been no recorded incident of a mass shooting in the same vicious and senseless nature as those happening in the US.

We want to keep it that way.