Flavor Flav Says U.S. Needs To Ban Guns, 'I Fear For My Kids'

Flavor Flav is calling for the United States to ban all firearms ... he says the country is caught in a "epidemic of gun violence with no sign we can stop or change course."

The rapper called on a gun ban in an op-ed in Newsweek ... Flav says he fears for his kids when he drops them off at school, and that school shootings are so common they have become normalized.

Flav says ... "Our schools aren't safe and our kids aren't safe. This is because gun protection laws are weak."

He says the "wrong people" have too much access to guns ... and he says he would know, because he went to jail because of guns and ended up on Rikers Island.

Flav says the lack of gun laws "has created a violence epidemic epidemic here in the United States that is nowhere else in the world." He calls it "domestic errorism" and adds, "Stop putting a price tag on the heads of our children."

The rapper says no civilian needs a semi-automatic weapon ... and folks who are scared and fearful would not have to protect themselves with guns if all guns were banned.

Flav says fear and power are two of the biggest emotions driving life in America and we need to flip the narrative to "let our fear of losing our children be more powerful than our fear of our next-door neighbor."

He says it's too easy for kids to grab their parents' guns and school shootings often happen when kids who are motivated by fear of being dislike, fear of not being accepted and fear of being made fun of bring a gun to school and open fire.

Flav says ... "This happens so often, we have started to become numb to it as a society. It's barely in the news if it's less than a handful of people who were killed, and then the news cycle moves onto something else ... The hits just keep on coming."