As an international student I don’t understand America’s gun control issue

I’ve been in Syracuse a year now. My story was a classic case of an international student comes to the United States looking for better opportunities. I believed America was the ultimate country with barely any imperfections.

My thoughts, however, changed after I actually started living here. As a college student, and very much out of self-interest too, I’ve been exposed to the national realities of the United States.

I come from Latin America which has similar issues to the US like unemployment, corruption, and gun violence.

The issue of gun violence, however, has been in constant discussion here and certainly matters a lot for college students after some of the recent mass shootings that have happened on college campuses.

This is what drove me to do some more research on the topic and develop a position about it.

Me in my hometown of Panama City

I was raised in the suburbs of Panama City all my life, so I was never really exposed to gun violence.  Since our country was really small I resonated with stories i would hear involving gun violence in the “red zone” neighborhoods.

With all the media coverage of the mass shootings in America, my parents got concerned with my safety. I felt and I keep feeling safe, though.

However, that is not an excuse to not create a more secure environment on college campuses.

Some people even ask me, “why are you concerned with this issues if you’re not even an American citizen?” I just reply by telling them I’m not a citizen but I will be living here for a while, so every political, social, or economical decision made here will potentially affect me.

So I do have an opinion about the whole gun control debate.

I live in the US now. I have opinions on political affairs here. The decisions made will somehow affect me.

I support gun regulation. I believe what President Obama recently did is nothing more than common sense.

Mine is a foreign and therefore objective perspective, and I say think someone finally needed to do something about all these attacks revolving unregulated guns out there.

If a car in the wrong hands is a deathly weapon, so why shouldn’t it be the same for guns?

Even liberties need to have some limits, otherwise there would be chaos. Imagine a world without any rule to our free will. It will be anarchic.

We need to evolve. Change does not mean disrespect to tradition, but the perfection of it.