Gun rights supporters gather at the Pennsylvania State Capitol April 23. (Courtesy of AP.)

While gun violence has been haunting American households, John Woods is one activist who aims at reducing this horror.

Woods was a fifth-year senior at Virginia Tech when the campus shooting occurred in 2007. Woods’ girlfriend was among the 33 people who were killed in the incident.

Having spoken to the survivors of the Virginia Tech shooting, Woods said, “none of the survivors feel like being armed would be a solution to campus violence.”

Woods, currently a graduate student at the University of Texas at Austin, founded a nonprofit organization called Texas Gun Sense.

Texas Gun Sense organizes activists from all around Texas to lobby for legislation preventing gun violence, especially in schools and college campuses.

Currently, Woods is working with Texas Gun Sense to push for legislation that will enforce universal background checks on gun buyers.

Woods advocates that people with mental health problems should have free access to mental health care in educational institutions. However, they should not be able to buy guns.

Woods says that reporting mental health conditions to the background check system could prevent gun violence.

Woods said that because Virginia was not submitting mental health records to background check system, the shooter there, who was declared a danger to himself, was able to purchase a gun.

Another hurdle to preventing gun violence, Woods said, is “straw purchases.”

He explained that anyone could buy a gun for anybody without a background check under a straw purchase, which can be dangerous.

On the issue of the background check system, he said private sales are also a cause for concern.

Private sales technically do not require a background check if the weapon is sold to a person the seller knows.

However, “there are people who take advantage of private sales as they make a business by selling guns [to anyone without asking for a background check],” Woods said.

Woods also said that private sales primarily take place in gun shows and online.

“The truth is, we don’t know how many private sales are happening in this country,” Woods said.

According to Woods, the National Rifle Association is opposing the implementation of a universal background check system, as the organization considers it a violation of people’s privacy.

Talking about past legislations that proposed preventative measures against gun violence on campus, Woods said, “[those] bills were not about campus safety.”

“They were about an ideological agenda which boiled down to how to sell more guns,” Woods said.