Dear future president,

I am Gabriella , I am an eighth grader in a suburb of cleveland ,Ohio. What I would like to talk about is gun control. Gun control is viewed in many different ways. People either think that we should ban guns, get more background checks or keep it the same way it is right now. The way we have it right now is a person can go to a gun show or order one online or even just by one simply from any gun store(procon.org) and purchase one without knowing who they are or if they are a criminal. That is putting people in danger. In the Second Amendment it states that all people have the right to bear arms. Now, the second amendment may state that everyone can own guns or weapons, but that doesn't mean that people are going to be responsible with the gun or treat it as respectfully as they should. To fix this issue, I believe that we should have more background checks. I believe that background checks would be an essential element to reducing mass shootings and the terrorism in our country. The total gun deaths were 464,033 this year. Of that number 37.7% were homicides, 58.2% were suicides, 2.2% were unintentional deaths(procon.org). Those numbers could have been much lower if we had background checks on the people that bought guns.

Today in our world with terrorist and murderers, or gang members could be anyone. A gun is a very powerful weapon, and people who purchase guns know that but why do they buy them?. In the United States more than half the country own guns, that is 265 million people(google.com). A Pew Foundation report found out that people feel safer when a gun is in their ownership. 79% of men and 80% of women and 64% of people living in a home with a gun owner, all these people felt safer with a gun(procon.org). This is also a reason why we can’t ban guns completely because if we take that away then all of those people won't feel safe in their own homes. This proves why we can't ban guns.a living of hunting. I believe that if we want to stop the mass shootings we need to enforce these background checks.

This would also reduce the school shootings in our country. In 2013 until 2016 there have been 142 school shootings(google.com). The most recent school shooting was October 25,2016 in Sandy, Utah. This is sad to think about how easily it is for the shooters to get a gun and use it to hurt people. In gun shows alone, 40% of the guns in America are bought from there. That could mean that the shooting rate increases by 40%. I am writing you this to inform you of the statistics,and how they could simply be fixed if we had background checks. Now, we might not be able to stop every bad guy that has a gun but we can most certainly try to stop more bad guys from getting guns but we can enforce background checks.

Sincerely,

Gabriella