Time to choose: Is it goodbye to the AR-15 or more kids?

The tale of two shootings. One created carnage at a party in Mukilteo with an AR-15, killing three and injuring another. His gun didn’t jam, he stopped because he ran out of ammo.

Another shooter created carnage at Seattle Pacific University but didn’t kill as many as he wanted because his shotgun jammed. One student was killed and two others were injured.

Related: Mukilteo shooter’s lawyer says tragedy was ‘compounded by the tools’ available

I don’t know if we’ll ever be able to do anything about the over 300 million guns in America; there are 340 million of us. And every time there is a shooting story in the news, it just makes people go out and buy more guns and more ammunition. These stories continue and I think we’re all tired of hearing about them.

And yet the question remains: How do you keep crazy people from getting guns.

When you buy a car, first and foremost, you have to prove that you can buy it. There’s a lot of paperwork. They’re going to look at your credit, your background. They’re going to see the kind of person you are. You’re investigated. They want to make sure you’ll be a good customer and a good citizen in that car. They’ll also contact your insurance company while you sit there. You can’t just lie about it – they will check up on you. Then, after all that, they’re going to check your license. If your license expired, they’re probably not going to sell you that car. Even if they do, they won’t let you drive off the lot.

Every dealer in the country will have a pretty good idea who you are before you leave with that particular vehicle.

This 19-year-old in Mukilteo — he bought an AR-15. How did he buy it? We don’t know. Did he walk into a gun store, buy it online? Still not sure. What we do know is that he signed up for a safety class but didn’t have to take it before receiving the gun. Since he didn’t know how to use the gun, according to The Seattle Times, he read the instruction manual – FROM THE CAR OUTSIDE WHERE HE PLANNED TO MURDER THESE KIDS. That’s how he learned how out to load the extra clip he’d bought from Cabelas.

And guess what? The AR-15 worked beautifully. It’s a killing machine just like the inventor, Eugene Stoner, wanted it to be. It creates a lot of carnage. It didn’t jam up like the shotgun did in SPU. These AR-15s are not meant to be among us. You shouldn’t be able to go into Cabelas and buy a clip for that weapon, not know how to use it, read up on it, and have it still be so effective that someone who had never fired one was still almost able to take four lives.

It’s not surprising that the AR-15-style assault rifles are what we saw at Sandy Hook and San Bernadino.

Related: Why Mukilteo shooter’s lawyer released suspect’s ‘suicide’ note

And listen, I went on a lot of hunts when I was growing up. The biggest thing I ever shot was a pigeon, but I have avid hunters in my family – brother, cousins, uncles, grandfather. If they weren’t fishing in Lake Michigan, they were out shooting deer in Wisconsin. My brother goes bear hunting in Colorado. He has a .30-06. He has sidearms. No AR-15. No huge clips. Even Stoner’s relatives have come out against his creations being used by the general public.

“Our father, Eugene Stoner, designed the AR-15 and subsequent M-16 as a military weapon to give our soldiers an advantage over the AK-47,” the Stoner family told NBC News last month. “He died long before any mass shootings occurred. But, we do think he would have been horrified and sickened as anyone, if not more, by these events.”

I’m really not a political person, but I’m with Hillary on this. I don’t want to take away your guns. Especially if you live in the middle of nowhere — you are the police. I want people to continue to hunt. I’ve done target practice and I know a lot of these guns are fun to shoot.

But, you know what, damn it, I’m sick and tired of this.

Have you noticed that no one’s even talking about the Mukilteo shooting nationally? It’s just another shooting. This just happens to be in our own backyard. Again.

So, I hope you filled out your ballots. Your pick for the United States president maybe doesn’t matter. But think about the local officials when it comes to gun violence, DUI’s and the homeless/heroin epidemics in our communities. It’s state and local officials who have to help us to work on these things. It’s not the federal government that’s going to fix it. If there is a fix.

The fact is that if we aren’t willing to say goodbye to guns that make no sense in our current society, then we can keep saying goodbye to our children. Just like we have in Sandy Hook, Marysville and in Mukilteo.