Dear President of the United States,

Even though I am not of age yet to purchase or own a firearm, I am coming to you as a worried citizen of New York. I see a problem that we need to work together to fix. The country of America is really going through a scary and somewhat violent time. The amount of gun violence is sickening! I’m writing to you concerned for not only my safety, but the safety of my loved ones and our future generations to come. This situation matters to not only myself but every other person in the United States who either wants to own a gun or is in fear of the amount of gun violence being shown in the United States. Guns cause conflict and can be used for bad instead of good. Over the summer, I lost a good friend due to gun violence. He was just walking home, minding his business when he was caught in the crossfire of a shootout on his street. I want more gun control laws so I don’t have to lose anymore friends.

According to the Mass Shootings Tracker, which tracks cases and incidents of mass shootings in the United States, there have been 372 mass shootings, killing 475 and injuring 1,870 people in the United States in 2015 alone. A source from Gun Violence Archives states, “Overall, the amount of people killed in the United States by gunfire in 2015 was 13,286 and the amount injured was 26,819 people. This is not including suicide.” This is an extremely high amount of people.

This isn’t all. The amount of younger kids being able to get their hands on guns is not good. Too many young kids have easy access to guns . Whether it’s them being able to get to it at home or if they are just able to buy them from someone off the street. In 2015, there were at least 265 people under the age of 18 who used a gun to shoot another person; whether it was by accident or not, 83 of those shootings were fatal. Most of these shootings were because it was a child playing recklessly with a gun. There are almost 1.7 million children who live in a home with a gun that is loaded and not properly locked away. Because of this, American children are more than 16 times more likely to die from a firearm.

We need to put a limit on the accessibility of a firearm. But we have to do this in a way that does not get rid of an American's 2nd Amendment rights. We need to make sure that people who should not have a gun don’t have access to one. As the President of the United States, I think you should try to get laws pushing more control. We need stronger, deeper and more specific background checks. For instance, if a person has any charges or arrests for domestic violence or assault, then he or she should not be able to own a gun. Also, people who have kids under the age of 5, should not be allowed to keep a gun in their homes.

Punishment for someone getting possession of a person's gun that is used to commit a crime should be tougher as well. If a person loses possession of his gun, he should have his gun license taken away. If the gun was locked up properly, there should be no way for someone to gain access to it. We should also make special locks and safes for guns. If we did this, there would be no excuses for a missing gun. We could make it so that you need a fingerprint to open the safe. We have it for cellphones, and banks have it as well. Making sure someone can’t break into a gun safe is more important than making sure someone is unable to get into a cellphone. Also, we should make these safes indestructible. In addition to making them as inaccessible as possible, we should equip them alarms to notify the owner if someone other thanhim is trying to gain access to the safe.

With these ideas we can help make America safe again. It only takes one step at a time. But it starts with you, our President. Will you take my ideas into consideration and help make us safe once again?

Sincerely,

Leilani