November 10, 2016

Dear Mr. President,

According to a study made by the Political Vel Craft in 2014, guns save 2,191 lives each day in the U.S. That’s around 799,715 lives saved in a year [1]. Now that’s a huge number! However, still many people are trying to enforce more and more redundant gun control laws on our citizens, even though they know the statistics on how many lives it can and has saved in the past. Therefore, I feel we need to stop enforcing additional gun control laws.

First of all, as the President of the United States, you should be pretty familiar with the Second Amendment. This Amendment states that, “the right of the People to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed” [2]. When we start to overburden our society with many gun control laws, we are inherently taking away the power the Second Amendment provides. Slowly our citizens will start losing trust in their government, and that isn’t healthy. If trust is lost, then violent protests can erupt, and that will possibly kill more lives. I believe that too much gun control demolishes the fact that our citizens have the right to bear arms and protect themselves whenever possibly needed. So I strongly feel that enforcing an abundant amount of laws will weaken the strength of the Second Amendment and cause us to lose faith in our government. I have acknowledged, that many believe that the Second Amendment is not an unlimited right to own guns, and that gun control laws are just as old or older than the Second Amendment, but right now, according my research, the Second Amendment is being threatened and we have to do something about it!

Secondly, I want you to really think about this question for a moment. Do gun control laws even help? The answer is no. Based on a study made by Kit Daniels on December 8, 2015, California has many of the most restrictive gun laws in the country, yet those laws did absolutely nothing to stop the San Bernardino shooting. Also, Paris, France has some of the most restrictive gun laws in the world, but those laws also did nothing to stop the Nov. 13th ISIS attacks. Mexico also has extremely restrictive gun laws like France, yet over 160,000 people have been murdered in the country’s drug war since 2007. The only people who are actually stopping the Mexican cartels are private citizens who are openly defying Mexico’s gun laws to form self-defense militias [4]. Now think of that question again - do gun control laws REALLY help? I don’t think so. So by enforcing more and more gun laws, we are basically not resolving anything about crimes or mass shootings, all we are doing is increasing our society’s tax on redundant laws and at the same time restricting our citizens right to protect themselves from imminent crimes.

Finally, I feel gun control actually causes more racism and discrimination. Jonathan Stray, Prof of computational journalism at Columbia University, in 2014 states that, “Similar to the enforcement of drug control, gun control laws will probably be enforced more harshly in inner city environments and not in rural environments. People of color often will be the ones to experience these laws and the punishment for these laws than others.” [3] For example, New York City police tactics did a good job on decreasing gun crime and increasing gun penalty for gun ownership, but they were mainly in areas where people of color were disproportionately burdened. Another example, was that according to Markus Funk in 1994, the melting-point laws were created to prevent the poor from possessing a firearm by taking the cheaper guns off the market. What made the situation even worse was the fact that the poorer areas with more crimes rarely got the same police protection than the more affluent areas got with less crimes. The saddening effect of this law was that it did not provide the same means of protection to people who were poor compared to the rich. We don’t want our citizens to feel threatened by anything like this happening again, so we have to do something about continuously increasing the amount of gun control laws we have.[5]. These are clear examples of how unnecessary laws can cause more discrimination.

So, I end this letter with this note. Some people say that additional gun laws would make the amount of gun related deaths lower, but I feel more gun control would just make things worse. More innocent people will die because they don’t have the protection that they were rightfully given by the Second Amendment. So if there ever comes a time when you want to increase gun control laws, think about this again: Guns save 2,191 lives each day in the U.S. That’s around 799, 715 lives saved in a year. I have explained the horrendous effects of enforcing abundant amounts of gun control laws. You were obviously chosen as our president for a reason. So please use that power to stop additional, redundant gun laws. This is something only you, as the President of the United States, can address and assure to your citizens that this is something that we have to change and that you will make every effort to change it!

Yours Truly,

Kaaya D. Sharma

FOOTNOTES:

[1] https://politicalvelcraft.org/2014/09/24/everyday-in-the-usa-2191americans-use-their-gun-in-self-defense-fbi-there-are-32-guns-purchased-every-minute-in-the-united-states/  

[2] https://www.law.cornell.edu/wex/second_amendment

[3] Jonathan Stray, Prof of computational journalism at Columbia University, 2014

[4] http://www.infowars.com/10-reasons-why-gun-control-wont-work/

[5] http://www.constitution.org/2ll/2ndschol/109mar.pdf