Dear Future President,

I am so glad that our country is a country where the government always listens to the people when they are unhappy. However, there are still a few problems we face that are very important, but government never really cares about. One of the problems that I want to share and really want you to take seriously is gun control. The nation really needs to control guns as seriously as possible, like strengthening background checks of  both seller and buyer, and unite the contract between seller and buyer. The government should have all those files so it should be easy to control the sale of guns.

Most gun businesses do not carefully check a buyer’s background. According to one New York Times article, “... the system has major holes in it, among them incomplete listings of criminal cases. Perhaps the biggest hole is that small-scale sellers, including many who do business at gun shows, are not required to do background checks – the so-called gun show loophole.” Based on this hole, anybody can get a gun, even a person who wants to kill someone. This system hole gives the chance to those people to buy a gun and to kill someone. We cannot find out who are possible killers by just looking at them, so we should protect ourselves as soon as we can. We can do this if we take serious the background checks and we can then make the union more safe. (nytimes.com)

There are too many homicides involving guns. if we don’t take gun control seriously, there will be an increase in homicide-by-firearms. Based on an article in The Atlantic, “The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has about 35–50 percent of the world’s civilian-owned guns, according to a 2007 report by the Switzerland-based Small Arms Survey. It ranks number one in firearms per capita. The United States also has the highest homicide-by-firearm rate among the world’s most developed nations.” If the government controls the guns as serious as possible, then the people cannot buy the guns like they buy vegetables. If people cannot get a gun by that easy way, they will not kill a person by just one second. Most cases by shooting are very difficult to find the shooter, because they can kill a person quietly, so no one knows who killed this person. Shooting is an easy way to kill a person and be unknown. The most important way that homicide-by-firearm rate will decrease a lot is for people not to have the guns. (Theatlantic.com) 

Another reason why the gun control laws we have now don’t work is because there are different gun laws between different states. If a person carrying a gun comes from a state that allows you to carry a gun goes to another state which does not allow people to carry a gun, that is not safe for the people who live in the state which does not allowed you to carry a gun. There are other laws about having a gun that are different in different states. For instance,  “Some states give gun owners more rights than others do. For example, twelve states currently prohibit employers from firing employees who leave guns locked in their personal vehicles on company property. That means 38 other states do allow companies to restrict employees from having weapons in their cars or trucks on company property.” If we control the law in the different states, that can be better to control the guns for everyone in all states. (findlaw.com)

Some people may argue that the Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution gives people rights to have and take their own guns. The Amendment states: "A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed." Keep and bear a gun is their right by the Second Amendment. However, different people all have different personalities that make them feel different ways and might make them do something very dangerous. That is why we should strengthen checking the background of both seller and buyer. For example, “After the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre in which 20 children and six adults were murdered in Connecticut, many states passed legislation strengthening their gun control laws.” We cannot predict when the gun violence will happen, so we need to strengthen management of who has guns that might decrease the gun violence. (findlaw.com)

Every human being deserves to feel safe. We cannot predict gun violence. However, we can ask the nation for help to control the guns to protect ourselves. Too many people die in this country every year and the gun laws we have are not working. I hope you will really take this problem seriously and make our nation more safe for everyone.

Sincerely,

Ruonan