More Guns Won’t Make Us Safer

Guest Opinion

By Quinn De Vecchi | Sept. 27, 2025

For the first time in a very long time, I found myself walking the streets freely without any sort of fear. Every step on the refurbished sidewalk felt like a new beginning. I entered metro cars and sat right in front of the sliding doors. When someone walked in, no fear. When I walked out, no fear.

I had spent over a month in Brussels, Belgium, in June to stay with some family and study French. For that time, I walked around, talked to random Europeans, and felt the safest I had for almost my entire life. I had no fear at all.

And you might be wondering, what fear is this? Well, it’s easy. Being shot. In the United States, I’m afraid of going outside and dying from a gun.

For most of the year, I live at a boarding school where the threat of a school shooting is part of everyday life. I often stay close to classrooms when walking (one of the best places to hide during a lockdown) or keep an eye on my notifications to see whether there has been a lockdown alert. During drills, I keep my head down and think about how many people have sat in my same position, hiding from the window, and have died because it was real.

And even when I’m not at school, the threat remains. During the summer, I work as a kidwatch attendant at a local recreation center. If there’s a shooter, we have to hide the children that parents trusted us to take care of. My deepest fear when just starting to work at age 14 was not being able to protect all the kids during a shooting and having to live with it for the rest of my life.

From recent CDC gun mortality data, there is an average of 1,421 people per year who die from guns, and this is in Michigan alone. That’s 115 teens and children that die from gun violence every year. And it’s only getting worse. From 2014-2023, the gun homicide rate increased by over 27 percent.

In Michigan, to purchase a gun, all you need is to not be a felon, have a license to purchase, and be over 21 (or just be over 18 for long guns like carbines, rifles, and shotguns). To get a permit, it usually costs about $10. These requirements get a bit more lenient once you’re buying guns online instead of in-person. Many shooters are able to get “ghost guns”—parts of guns without serial numbers or regulation that can be pieced together—without any type of license.

Back in Belgium, guns are almost completely banned to regular citizens. To get one, a Belgian must apply for a firearms license, and they can only be approved for very specific reasons. The most common reason one may apply to own a gun is for sport hunting, a national pastime in Belgium.

Applicants also need to pass several tests, not be a felon, turn in a medical report, and be over the age of 18. After achieving a license, applicants then must usually apply for a “Model 4” license, which takes up to four months to receive, and can cost up to €140.

And so, the Flemish Peace Institute found that just in Belgium, there were about 184 gun-related incidents in 2025. From that number, about 21 people died from firearms.

For reference, Michigan and Belgium have only slightly different population numbers. In 2025, Michigan has a population of just over 10 million people (from the United Census Bureau), and Belgium has a population of just under 12 million (from the Statbel Belgian Statistical Office).

This means that in Belgium, about 1.6 people per 100,000 are involved in a gun violence incident; and in Michigan, 13.6 people die per 100,000 people. Belgium has one of the strictest gun laws in Europe. Michigan has the 27th-highest rate of gun deaths in the U.S.

While Michigan’s gun laws have been slowly racking up in the past several years, the truth is, we need more protection. We need longer wait times, higher fees, and more serious consideration of laws and firearm regulations.

Those regulations could include rejecting the Shoot First laws, which allow a person to shoot someone and then claim self-defense later. Everytown (a gun prevention group), states that Shoot First “homicides in which white shooters kill Black victims are deemed justifiable four times as often as when the situation is reversed.” Shoot First laws are also associated with an increase of homicide rates—almost an additional 700 homicides each year.

Or we could ban assault weapons, the deadliest guns used in mass shootings. In one minute, an AR-15 can fire about 60 rounds per minute. Fully automatic weapons like an AR-47 can fire up to 1,000 rounds per minute.

I know that I will never feel safe while there are such lax laws on gun violence in Michigan. And I know that other kids won’t feel safe either. There is nothing “great” about people dying from guns, and so the U.S. has never really been great—and it never will be, if we don’t fix the problem.

Quinn De Vecchi is a creative writing senior at Interlochen Arts Academy.