Dear Future President

I think that gun control could be a good thing but I also think that we are going about it wrong. I think that banning guns altogether is a bad idea because the Australian and German governments tried that, and while it did make the gun violence rates go down slightly, it also made the overall murder rate go up. People are going to kill people whether they do it with guns or not. Banning guns will just make the everyday civilian more vulnerable and make criminals more powerful.

In a world where guns are banned, people who obey the law are not able to buy guns because that’s illegal. Criminals on the other hand can get as many guns as they want because there is guaranteed to be a black market. Now, instead of the criminals having guns and the law-abiding civilians at least having a chance to defend themselves, the criminals have guns, but the law-abiding citizens don’t have anything, and therefore have no chance to defend themselves.

The total number of gun related deaths in 2016 is 12,551. 1,523 of those are defensive use. If we banned guns, that 1,523 would go way down and that 12,551 would go way up. Banning all guns is just a stupid thing to do. People think it will help but really it will just make everything worse.

In Washington there was a short time where there was a ban on handguns, and the same thing happened. The gun violence went down a little, but the overall murder rates went up. Why would banning guns on a large scale like the entire United States work when it doesn’t on a smaller scale like Washington, Australia, and Germany? It wouldn’t, and that’s why we need to stop being idiots and quit trying to ban guns because that’s not the kind of gun control we need.