Dear Next President:

My name is Tyler Mary and I’m a student at West Albany High School. Stricter gun control laws will only anger Americans and cause more issues than they can prevent. People in America love their guns and don’t want them to be taken away or harder to obtain. Most people buy them for self defense and others buy them for sports such as competitive shooting. Making guns illegal won’t stop the buying and selling of them and people will find any number of ways to obtain firearms.

Gun control laws will only create more issues than they will hope to prevent. The Second Amendment of the United States Constitution reads: "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.” If the government were to ban all firearms, they would have a real hard time collecting all of them because people would lie about what they have and how much they have or if it came down to it; some people would fight to keep their firearms. Most of my family or family friends would fight to keep their firearms no matter the cost. Guns are a “safety precaution” and knowing that people have guns can help prevent crimes. Some people would either be scared or concerned whether or not the house they are breaking into is a house full of guns and people that know how to legally use them and won’t hesitate to use them.

They can’t outright ban firearms as stated by the second amendment, "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.” Growing up in a family that was for guns and used them for hunting or for sport, it is hard to agree with all the anti-gun protests to a point. The government can only ban certain types of firearms. Certain firearms they wish to hopefully ban or make extremely harder to obtain are what they refer to as “Assault Weapons”. “Assault Weapon” is very vague, as all firearms could be considered to be an “Assault Weapon” as they have a detachable magazine and a pistol grip of sorts which most all weapons have. The “Assault Weapons” the government is hoping to ban or make harder to obtain would be assault rifles, fully-automatic rifles with magazines that have the capacity of 30-100 rounds of a high-caliber round. Fully-automatic firearms aren’t very practical especially in home defense for many reasons. The high caliber and penetration of the round, would do more collateral damage. Pistols of small caliber such as 9 Millimeter and .45 ACP (Automatic Colt Pistol) has much less penetration when it hits its target, so it will reduce the amount of collateral damage in self defense situations. Another way to lessen collateral damage is to pair one of these small caliber pistols with hollow point rounds which break up and cause the bullet to “disintegrate” upon impact.

Stricter Gun Control Laws won’t have a good effect. All guns can’t be outright banned and taken away from the American citizens. High caliber rifles or firearms should be harder to obtain but not banned. They can be used for sport such as speed shooting competitions and clay shooting. Small caliber firearms should be a little harder to obtain but should still be relatively easy for a normal law-abiding citizen to acquire, especially for means of self defense.

Sincerely,

Tyler M.