Dear Mr. or Ms. President,

Mass murders in the U.S have been drastically rising. Take the school shootings that have happened all of last year. The shooting at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon which marks America’s 45th school shooting. On Thursday morning, a gunman opened fire on the college campus. The shooter killed 10 people, and wounded at least 20 others at the school, attended by approximately 3,300 full-time and 16,000 part-time students.

A project, the Mass Shooting Tracker, has a rather different definition of mass shootings. The FBI measures a "mass shooting" as an incident when people are killed, the tracker classifies a mass shooting as an event when four or more people are shot. Using those facts, the tracker reports that 294 known mass shootings have occurred this year, the year 2016, meaning that many more “mass shootings” have happened throughout that year. There were 372 mass shootings in the U.S in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870.  There were 64 school shootings in 2015, according to a dedicated campaign group set up in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in Connecticut in 2012. Those figures include occasions when a gun was fired but no-one was hurt.

But this isn’t just about school/mass shootings. Gun violence contributes to everything that has to do with firearms, such as drive-bys, school shootings, and shootings in general that lead to the deaths of family members, other loved ones and people you may not know around you. About 62% of American deaths are firearm suicides, supporting the change needed for the control of firearms. Of the 164,821 firearm deaths in the U.S from 2010 to 2014, 102,557 were suicides.

Now what causes gun violence? No one can say for sure why they keep rising because of the multitude of reasons, making it hard to pinpoint why. Some speculate that the violent video games that have been coming out influence people to kill each others. Others believe that most gun deaths/injuries are a result from mental instability. It could be all of the above. Maybe it could be because we are being too restrictive with our own laws. For example, look at Chicago, Illinois (one of the most violent states in the U.S). They have highly strict gun laws, and it's still violent. Then we look at Kennesaw, Georgia with not very strict gun laws and their crime rate went down by 89%. Maybe instead of tightening our laws on guns, we should let go of some of these laws and see how America as a country does. But whatever the causes are, please look into making America safer for the present and future generations. America shouldn’t have to live in constant fear of being shot on the streets or school or anywhere. The 2nd Amendment gives us the right to bear arms, not to kill one another. 

                                                                                                                                                              Sincerely,

                                                                                                                                                             ~James

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Cited Websites:

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-us-canada-34996604

https://everytownresearch.org/gun-violence-by-the-numbers/#DailyDeaths

http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2014/10/mass-shootings-increasing-harvard-research

https://theprogressivecynic.com/debunking-right-wing-talking-points/refuting-gun-enthusiasts-anti-gun-control-arguments/

http://www.newsweek.com/45th-mass-shooting-america-2015-378803