Story highlights Daniel Webster: We should not have to accept these often preventable acts of gun violence

Gun owners are sick of these killings and want policies to keep guns out of the hands of dangerous people

Daniel Webster is director of the Johns Hopkins Center for Gun Policy and Research, and professor of health policy and management at the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health.

(CNN) Once again, Americans are shocked and saddened by an unspeakable act of gun violence. Nine innocent people who attended a bible study at the historic Emanuel AME Church in Charleston, South Carolina, will not return home to their loved ones, and a community will forever be changed.

In a nation with a homicide rate that is nearly seven times higher than the average of other developed countries which have much stricter regulations, the all too regular experience of mass murder committed with firearms in American is tragic and senseless.

We should not have to accept these often preventable acts of violence -- about 11,000 homicides committed with firearms per year , or about 30 a day -- as our fate.

Daniel W. Webster

Although victims are sometimes chosen at random, acts of violence are not random. They occur due to a number of factors that we understand better as a result of scientific studies. While the data are unclear about whether access to a gun causes violence, it is clear that for individuals with a history of violence, substance abuse, and criminal behavior, having access to firearms increases their risk of committing lethal violence.

But many people believe that keeping guns from dangerous people simply doesn't work. They've swallowed the gun lobby's Kool-Aid -- that criminals don't obey gun laws, so gun control laws needlessly burden law-abiding gun owners without doing anything to reduce violence.