Dear President,

According to dosomething.org in the United States of America, there are approximately 270 million firearms possessed by civilians, and only 897,000 carried by police. That is a fact that I find horrifying especially when you consider that the owners of these 270 million firearms are probably not nearly as well trained as law enforcement, if they are trained at all. My problem is not with guns themselves than with the ease and accessibility in which people can access them by simply filling out forms and attending a couple of gun safety classes. According to smartgunlaws.org there are training courses that people have attend before they are allowed to purchase a gun,but there is no way to make sure that the person isn’t gong to use it to harm another person and/or persons. While other people may argue that it is their constitutional right to bear arms, I believe that the government needs to have stricter laws on guns, especially machine guns and other military grade weapons that the civilian population are allowed to own. I do not think that simply filling out a form is enough to qualify a person to purchase a weapon. Unless you are a member of the military, law enforcement, or even a hunter I do not think that people have any business handling machines that's sole purpose is to kill. Close to 33,000 Americans were victims of gun-related deaths in 2011 and an average of 268 citizens are shot every day. 

Thats a lot of people being shot everyday and despite what you might hear in the news, I don’t believe that those 268 people were shot by the police. Why is it easier to get a gun than to get access to marijuana, which is known to alleviate people's pain rather than kill them? I think that more stringent laws need to be put in place concerning the types of weaponry that people can get hold of. I think prevention is better than cure,the cure being useless background checks. While it is a constitutional right to bear arms, the government has the right to control what kind these are and to what extent. Ultimately, You would be saving the people from themselves.

Please push for stricter gun policies and make it impossible for civilians to get their hands on military grade weaponry. By doing this you are preventing the deaths of many innocent people.

Cheers,

Raja Frazier