Every day in the United States 89 people die from gun violence in homicides, suicides and accidents, according to the Brady Campaign, yet proponents of unreasonable gun rights are unwilling to compromise to save lives.

The United States needs to take drastic action to fight this gun violence epidemic by enacting laws that would restrict gun ownership to only those who have undergone thorough background checks and would outlaw guns that are not purely for sport.

The National Rifle Association uses the millions of dollars it receives from the gun industry to oppose even the most basic and reasonable gun regulation, citing the importance of guns for self-defense.

However, for every self-defense use of a firearm in the home, there are 11 suicides, seven domestic assaults and four unintentional shootings, according to the Journal of Trauma.

Countries such as Canada, Japan, Australia and England have outlawed guns and bought them back from owners to huge success.

In 2011, the rate of all gun deaths in England was 0.23 per 100,000 people, compared to 10.38 per 100,000 people that same year in the United States, according to gunpolicy.org.

Even in relatively peaceful Minnesota, gun violence is prevalent. Last Memorial Day, a shooting in Minneapolis left one dead and two injured, according to Fox News.

Gun violence is often blamed on other variables besides the prevalence of and easy access to guns. However, these countries all have violent movies and video games, bullying in schools, oppressed minorities, people with mental illnesses and similar rates of non-firearm crime. Their gun violence rates remain drastically lower.

Taking guns away from Americans sounds difficult because gun culture is deeply ingrained in the United States. Australia is one country that had similar levels of objection and skepticism toward gun control.

In 1996, the Australian conservative government instituted extensive gun control laws and a gun buyback system after a mass shooting. Since then, Australia has not had any gun massacres and its gun homicide rate has declined by 59 percent, according to a study by Andrew Leigh of Australian National University and Christine Neill of Wilfrid Laurier University.

So far this year, 107 mass shootings have occurred in the United States, according to gunviolencearchive.org.

Students can get involved by contacting their representatives, attending local rallies and signing up to volunteer through protectmn.org.

It’s evident something is wrong with our culture when semi-automatic weapons capable of killing crowds of people can be bought at Walmart.