Dear Mr. or Mrs. President,

It has been on my mind a great amount lately with everything going on involving police brutality, attacks made by our own citizens and etc. With these horrible incidents taking place so many are quick to bring about the issue of “gun control.” I, like thousands of others have a tremendous amount of negative views on this issue.

The first problem is that people are quick to say guns are the reason for all the violence and death. I don’t remember a time in any shooting that the gun was able to show up by itself and start pulling the trigger on it’s own. If I remember correctly, there has to be someone behind that “monster” carrying out the action of making the gun fire. Yes, used in the wrong ways, guns are going to be seen as “weapons”, however, there are many things that can be classified as dangerous if used incorrectly. For instance, a kitchen knife isn’t intended to kill people with, but in plenty of cases that has been the weapon of a killing. I guess in that case we need to put out kitchen knife controls! Maybe even fork controls because they could be dangerous too!

Growing up I was raised around guns, but I was educated on them and taught the important things many children aren’t aware of. I knew they weren’t considered toys and didn’t dare touch them without permission. It was normal for my family on the weekends to go out to a gun range and shoot, but if we weren’t at the gun range or taking part in the seasons of the different types of hunting the guns were kept put up and out of reach. The only other use I would ever need from a gun would be for protection, and I mean only if my life was in a threatening position.

Something worth talking about is the federal government and the requirement of a background check before purchasing a firearm. As a member of the National Rifle Association and my dad being the Chairman of our local Ark-La-Tex Friends of NRA committee I see first-hand the steps of processing a gun to your name. “In 2015, a record total of 23,141,970 firearm background checks were processed”(DelGreco). Every year at our annual banquet we have an FFL worker completing the task of background checks on each person purchasing a gun that night. With these background checks, the main thing they are looking for is to see if you have a record of a criminal background, but they fail to look at the mental stability of each individual. As stated in an article by Metzl and MacLeish “up to 60% of perpetrators” in who commit mass shooting have shown “symptoms including acute paranoia, delusions, and depression before committing their crimes”(Metzl and MacLeish). How come our government has failed to do mental illness background checks? If someone isn’t “right in their mind” then why would you allow them to own a deadly weapon? This allows you to see that caution needs to be taken. Without blaming the object of causing the harm, look at the human holding the “killer.” Again that gun can’t operate by itself, it’s not a living thing, there has got to be someone utilizing the gun.

It’s tiresome when people automatically blame the gun. Our society today has problems and blame our negative actions on everything else besides growing up and dealing with the consequences of our own poor choices. If we would just stop and look instead of blinding ourselves to the truth, we would have the answers in front us.

Sincerely,

Kristin Leger

Works Cited

DelGreco, Kimberly J. “2015 NICS Operations Report.” https://www.fbi.gov/file-repository/2015-nics-ops-report.pdf/view

Metzl and MacLeish. “Mental Illness, Mass Shootings, and the Politics of American Firearms.” http://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/pdf/10.2105/AJPH.2014.302242