Dear Future President,

Guns are so easily obtained and shootings have gone up drastically this year compared to last. I feel this is a serious problem because people like my father, who want to obtain one legally, might get persecuted for having one. He may even be killed if he is seen as a threat for having a weapon. Now, I am not saying that they shouldn’t be banned entirely, but they should definitely become more regulated so they can’t be obtained by criminals or murderers.

I think that regulations, rules, and policies for carrying and obtaining them should be more strict. As of now, big chains of stores like Walmart, as well as sporting goods stores, sell guns. They usually require a background check but it doesn’t take long and the client or customer of the store can usually have that weapon in days. People can also obtain guns from neighbors, coworkers, friends, and family, as stated by CNN. These can make the threat of them very real and if put in the wrong hands they can be extremely dangerous. These can also be obtained illegally. PBS.org says that they can be bought by gun traffickers and they can account for 75% of them used in crimes. Only about 15% of guns used in crimes have actually stolen.

Some could say that the regulations on guns are already somewhat regulated, but I don’t believe these rules are strict enough as them can still be pretty easy to obtain. I don’t feel they should be banned, like others do. But they should require more background checks and be more in depth with the buyer of the weapon. This would be better than banning them altogether without not having enough rules to allow them to be easily obtained. Banning them would possibly make crime even skyrocket due to them being obtained and used illegally and keeping the regulations the same would leave us with the same issues we are battling currently.

I feel that this issue needs to be brought to light because though some people are concerned, not enough are and instead of helping with the situation by trying to get laws to get passed, they sit back and criticize people when the issue occurs. Guns should be more regulated and harder to obtain so that criminals and murderers cannot get their hands on them as easy as they do now. These issues are worsening as years go on because we as Americans aren’t speaking up about it enough to realize it’s a problem. I hope this issue is brought to light soon and I hope we can start helping the problem instead of worsening it.