Dear Future President of The United States,

My name is Donte Raderegus Angel Lopez, a 7th grader attending Lobo School of Innovation, at Quimby Oak Middle School in San Jose, California. I have a concern about gun laws that are negatively affecting our nation. I want to share with you the facts about guns and death in the US, guns and crimes, and laws that need to be stricter.

Leading Cause of Death

According to the Washington post (Soffen, July 16, 2016), ”In 2014, 42,773 Americans killed themselves according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Half did so with guns. That’s not only more than the number of Americans who were killed in mass shootings, it’s more than the number of people who were killed with guns in homicides and accidents combined.” The author feels that if we have limited access to guns, more stricter laws would take place, less people will commit suicide. We reduce the amounts of guns decreasing the ability to commit suicide with a gun. According to the website called the finnalcail world ( http://bit.ly/2efVqxO ) says” True, but the key words of the 2nd Amendment are ‘a well regulated Militia,’ which give us context for the meaning of the right to bear arms.” Though this is true , households that have a gun are more likely to have someone commit a crime.

Violent Crime

Justfacts.com (WWW.Justfacts.com, 11/3/2016) reported, “ A 1997 survey of more than 18,000 prison inmates found that among those serving time for a violent crime, “30% of State offenders and 35% of Federal offenders carried a firearm when committing the crime.”This statistic shows that if you own a gun you are likely to have it while you commit a crime. Gun control would help us decrease the amount of guns in the public. This gives less access to people who are most likely to commit a crime. But the website (financial world ) says

“Thomas Jefferson once said, ‘Our liberty depends on the freedom of the press, and that cannot be limited without being lost.’ Imagine if we applied Gun Control logic to the press! We can extend Jefferson’s logic to all of the explicit rights that the authors of the Constitution deemed fundamental.”Though this could be true , this website , (http://www.thefinancialword.com/10-arguments-for-and-against-gun-control/2/,), tells me that guns were made to kill in the first place.

Law

In 2008 the US Supreme Court changed the law to allow handguns to be fully loaded and unsecured in a home. As a result the murder and intentional manslaughter rate went from 30 to 80 (per 100,000 person). (www.justfacts.com, 11/3/2016). If we kept the firearms law from 1976 there would be less deaths because access and temptation to use a gun.

The current law states that we cannot sell or transfer a weapon across the state line, dishonorable discharge, a person who has a misdemeanor, illegal immigrant, mental illness, mental health, or imprisoned. (www,justfacts.com, 11/3/2016). We are responsible for making sure that guns are not in the hands of criminals or the mentally unstable. People in the community care that we are responsibly handling guns according to the laws. By doing this we prevent murder, suicide, robbery, and other harsh crimes like rape. But this site ,(http://www.safewise.com/resources/guns-at-home), tells us that we are more likely to shoot a person if we have possession of a gun, showing how laws need to be stricter in favor of gun control .

There are many issues in the United States that have been discussed, but I believe that tighter gun control nationally would strongly affect the nation in a positive way. It is the government's responsibility to translate the Second Amendment to how American is behaving. The new America shows that too little control will result in crime, suicide, and murder.

Your Student ,

Donte Lopez