Dear future president,

Did you know that “The yearly average of mass shootings has tripled from an average of five per year between the years of 2000 and 2008”(RT). According to the New York Times, “There were, on average, 16.4 such shootings a year from 2007 to 2013, compared with an average of 6.4 shootings annually from 2000 to 2006”(Schmidt). We need to have stricter gun control laws because it’s way too easy to get guns, there are a lot of shootings by underage children, and there are a lot more homicides happening in America.

In the Gun Control Act of 1969, it laid out “certain categories of people that are ineligible to own a gun. A number of those disqualifications are based on criminal history”(Katz). Basically all you need to get a gun is to be over the age of 21 and to not have any criminal history. This is how easy it is to get a gun in America, no wonder why there is such an increase in mass shootings. There are about “37%”(Desilver) of people who say there is a gun in their house. There is about 300 million people in America as of now, this means that more than 100 million people own guns. This is because of how easy it is to own an object that can take countless lives. There have been a total of “359 mass shootings”(Rocheleau). The definition of mass shooting is that when there are 4 or more people killed or injured by a firearm. This shows that in 2016 there has been 1436 people killed or injured by a gun. This can be attributed to how easy it is to get a gun.

Consequently so, due to the easy access of guns, there are a lot of shootings caused by underage children. In 2015 “At least 265 children under the age of 18 picked up a firearm and accidentally shot themselves or someone else with it”(Ingraham). There should be no reasons why children should be able to get to these firearms if there were stricter laws. Well, there is only 1 state, Massachusetts, with a “law requiring gun owners to lock up their firearm”(Pearle). One would think that with such a prevalence of guns, to the point where there are about 100 million people who own guns, there would be at least a law where there is a requirement for owners to lock up their firearms. In 2012 the statistic for a house with a child and a gun in it is “31%”(Pearle). An underage child usually has access to firearms because their parents have them and they aren’t locked up. With stricter gun laws, children will have a lower chance to stumble upon a gun or have easy access to it.

Furthermore, the biggest reason of them all is that there is a lot of firearm related homicides in America right now. Of the murders this year “72% died of gun violence”(Cuestas). Seeing as how easy it is to get a gun, the fastest and easiest way to kill someone is with a gun. There has been an increase to mass shootings as “the rate of mass shootings has tripled since 2011”(Rocheleau). This is such a big and growing problems where shootings are become frequent monthly events to the point where some people are even desensitized to the grief and anger caused by the shooters. Studies have shown where “The strong law states' firearm-related homicide rate was also 40% lower and their firearm-related suicide rate was 37% lower”(Alcindor). A statistic where if there are stricter gun laws in America, then the growing number of lives taken will decrease.

Future President, I implore that you think to create stricter gun laws that would stop such easy access to firearms, stop the children having such easy access to firearms, and stopping the increasing number of deaths related to guns. This is not an ignorable problem, rather if not stopped soon then there will come a day where everyone will have access to a weapon that can take many lives. The number of mass shootings will even go down from triple the amount of shootings between 2005 to 2008 to closely negligible.