Dear future president, 

 I am a student at Northview High School in Grand Rapids MI, my name is Reid V.

The United States has 88.8 guns per 100 people or about 270,000,000 guns which is about 22% of Americans own one or more guns. 35% of men and 12% of women, (everyone in the United States has the right to bare arms it is the 2nd Amendment of the Constitution and that can not be taken away from the people of the United States.

The debate over the Second Amendment and gun rights in the United States was reignited this year when a federal appeals court struck down one of the toughest gun control laws in the country. In March, the U.S. Appeals Court for the District of Columbia Circuit overturned a 30 year old law that forbids almost all DC residents from owning handguns. The law was challenged by six Washington, DC residents who said they wanted to keep guns in their homes to protect themselves against crime.

The court’s ruling is being appealed. At issue is the meaning of the Second Amendment. Opponents of gun control maintain that the Second Amendment guarantees an individual’s right to have firearms. Gun control supporters say the amendment embodies only a collective right of the states to maintain militias. Advocates of gun control say that easy access to firearms increases gun violence and therefore restriction of gun ownership will save lives. Opponents of gun control say that such restriction violates an individual liberty guaranteed by the Constitution and cite the need for armed self-defense.

Some of the people in the United States that want to take guns away from all citizens do not own or has never even shot a gun before and to take the right away from any american citizen would be going against the second Amendment and that reads: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Such language has created considerable debate regarding the Amendment's intended scope. On the one hand, some believe that the Amendment's phrase "the right of the people to keep and bear Arms" creates an individual constitutional right for citizens of the United States. Under this "individual right theory," the United States Constitution restricts legislative bodies from prohibiting firearm possession, or at the very least, the Amendment renders prohibitory and restrictive regulation presumptively unconstitutional. On the other hand, some scholars point to the prefatory language "a well regulated Militia" to argue that the Framers intended only to restrict Congress from legislating away a state's right to self-defense. Scholars have come to call this theory "the collective rights theory." A collective rights theory of the Second Amendment asserts that citizens do not have an individual right to possess guns and that local, state, and federal legislative bodies therefore possess the authority to regulate firearms without implicating a constitutional right. And that can never be taken away from the people of the united states it is part of “WE THE PEOPLE”.