Thomas Coreil

Ms. Guillory

English III(H)- 3rd hour

9 November 2016

Dear Mr. Trump:

If someone barged into your house with the intention to kill you and your family, what would you do? I would hope that any logical person would reach for a weapon to defend themselves and their family. Nine out of ten times this weapon is a gun. On September 17, 1787, thirty-nine men signed the Constitution in which the 2nd article wrote that Americans the right to bear arms. With these two thoughts in mind, why would anyone want to ban this right in which countless numbers of people have sacrificed to protect?

Numerous reasons as to why these gun crimes happen have nothing to do with the guns themselves but rather the laws and politics regarding those firearms. Michael Schaus, for example, writes that, “With an education system that has failed the inner-city youth, and anti-poverty programs that have done little more than spur an exodus of private capital, it’s unsurprising to see violence sweep areas of Chicago like an epidemic.” This shows one of a great deal of other situations in which the politics going on in the city have failed to help the people inside of it. Some might ask why Chicago didn’t ban all the guns in the city if it lingers as such a problem. That might work if it wasn’t that guns were already in circulation in the city; it looks as if this plan is unquestionably impractical. Yet, if this feat could be achieved, most of the guns taken away belong to law-abiding citizens not involvement in gun violence. It could not happen. The city had failed to keep firearms out of the hands of the criminals who intended to do harm with the weapons; so, in turn, the citizens of the Chicago (and countless others across the United States) prevail as the real victims.

These facts would lead a person to believe that “assault weapons” should be banned because these high-powered weapons prevail to be what criminals are using. Judith Miller would have to say that, “You don’t need an assault weapon to protect your family or shoot a deer” and “the second amendment does not entitle citizens to own combat weapons”. But, in fact, the latter is false. In the Supreme Court case: District of Columbia v Heller in 2008, the Court held that the second amendment protects citizens’ rights to own these semi-automatic weapons. Miller wrote this paper in 2015 and showed that Miller failed to do her research on this topic. In fact, “assault weapons purchases such as the AR-15 have risen by 4.5 million” stated in A Ban on Assault Weapons Would Not Reduce Crime and that “violent crime has been cut in half since in peaked in 1991”. These show that assault weapons have scant to do with any sort of crime happening. Much of the problem with gun crimes have to do with atrocious job done in background checks on the certain demographics of people.

The problems with stopping mass shooting and those sort of atrocities persist because people try to think about it in the moment and fail to prevent it beforehand. In one instance in which a man shot up a movie theater in Aurora, Colorado, “he bought more than 6,000 rounds of ammunition, more than 3,000 round for the assault rifle”- Miller. This should have been looked into at least a slight bit abnormal because this had all been done in 60 days before the shooting on the Internet. Instances like these should be struck as odd; especially, people with felonies and with a history and mental illness. These remain parts of their history that need to be checked in background checks.

With the proper use of background checks and adaption of politics to today’s view of disliking gun-control, we as a nation can enjoy the legal use of our guns while helping decline gun violence. I have seen the effects of what gun violence can do to a community. On July 23, 2015, John Houser killed 3 people including himself and tried to destroy the community of Lafayette, Louisiana. But, Lafayette came together as a community and remains very much a pro-guns area despite the tragedy. Although, if the law enforcement observed that this mentally-ill man should not have bought the guns, it could have all been prevented.

Sincerely:

Thomas C.

Bibliography

"A Ban on Assualt Weapons Would Not Reduce Crime." Guns and Crime, edited by Noël Merino, Greenhaven Press, 2015. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&currPage=&dviSelectedPage=&scanId=&query=&prodId=OVIC&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&mode=view&catId=&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010015270&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=&source=Bookmark&u=lafa43079&jsid=12f9da32167d1d3e47fecb7d2df05b6d. Accessed 10 Nov. 2016.

Miller, Judith. "Treasure the Second Amendment, but Ban Assault Rifles." Guns and Crime, edited by Noël Merino, Greenhaven Press, 2015. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=false&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&currPage=&scanId=&query=&prodId=OVIC&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&mode=view&catId=&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010015269&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=&source=Bookmark&u=lafa43079&jsid=3bfc71446b89735b2a718b34ec325fe4. Accessed 11 Nov. 2016.

Schuas, Michael. "There Is a Problem with Politics, Not Guns, in the United States." Gun Violence, edited by Noël Merino, Greenhaven Press, 2015. At Issue. Opposing Viewpoints in Context, ic.galegroup.com/ic/ovic/ViewpointsDetailsPage/ViewpointsDetailsWindow?disableHighlighting=&displayGroupName=Viewpoints&currPage=&dviSelectedPage=&scanId=&query=&prodId=OVIC&search_within_results=&p=OVIC&mode=view&catId=&limiter=&display-query=&displayGroups=&contentModules=&action=e&sortBy=&documentId=GALE%7CEJ3010223269&windowstate=normal&activityType=&failOverType=&commentary=&source=Bookmark&u=lafa43079&jsid=94189daf40d92f61e862ffa6740dacbf. Accessed 11 Nov. 2016.