My Friends are Dying
I have buried twelve of my bestest friends. I am only 15 years old. Gang violence is out of control and it has to stop. This is my plea to save the lives of my friends, and all the kids around the United States. I don't want kids to have to experience the loss, the fear, the things that I have had to painfully live through. Stop the violence.
Dear Future President,
I’m writing you today because I believe that gun/gang violence is something that needs to change in America. People from young to old are losing their lives because of gang murders, shootings, robberies, and so much more. In 2015 in Cincinnati there were over 2,000 violent crimes and it is estimated that almost 65% of them were gang related.
The first reason why I think this is important because beyond all of the other reasons it is simply murder. If it is not murder, it critical injuries or big amounts of money being stolen, or cars being stolen. It is in a lot of cases children being taken from their parents, or parents being taken from their kids. It is all things that permanently affect families or people, and it affects the world overall in a bad way.
The second reason I think this is important is because when things like this happen, people can’t afford lawyers, or talk to anyone about it because of the mentality people from the hood have. They have nowhere to go and no one to get help from when things like this happen. More often than not this permanently affects people and sometimes changes lives forever.
I have a personal connection to this because growing up I had a dad who did lots of drugs and used to steal my mom’s money and things that were worth value all to go towards drugs and guns and violent associated things and we left and used to literally live on the streets and growing up around things like that even when we moved out of that I still have always hung out around areas like that not experiencing the best things and hanging out around the wrong people and with me doing things like that I’ve lost 11 friends to shootings and other ways of being killed and I personally have only gotten stabbed compared to friends who have been killed and that has scarred me for the rest of my life and it is all because of the things that go on in low-income ghettos/slums.
Some people think that things like that are not a big deal and it is nothing to worry about and everything is all good and that as long as it doesn’t happen to them that it is okay. It is not “I do not believe this is wrong”, I know this is wrong to think like that I have experienced it first hand and I know it is not good for anyone.
These are some of the reasons I believe we need to change the way the world works when it comes to economic differences and living areas and things like this and it will make the world a better place.
Sincerely,
Ethan