Dear Mr. or Ms. President,

    Gun violence is a big issue with our society. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, in 2013, there were 73,505 firearm injuries, 11,208 homicides 21,175 suicides; 505 deaths due to accidental of a firearm; and 281 deaths due to firearms (Priorities for Research to Reduce the Threat of Firearm-Related Violence). The issue is that there are way too many citizens dying because of gun violence. The reason why people should care about this issue is what happens if your daughter or son or wife etc. is the next to fall in hands of gun violence? How bad would you feel? My claim is we should get rid of all guns except for the army. Why do we need guns? To protect ourselves. Well, if you take away guns then your enemy will not have a gun either. My point is if you take away all the guns then you take away the gun violence problem.

      Lately, there have been too many mass shootings happening. How many mass shootings are too many? Just one would be too many, but there were 372 mass shootings in the US in 2015, killing 475 people and wounding 1,870, according to the Mass Shooting Tracker, which catalogues such incidents. A mass shooting is defined as a single shooting incident which kills or injures four or more people, including the assailant.The Harrison District on the West Side, for example, has had almost 400 people shot this year after logging 350 all of last year. Englewood saw 330 people shot all of last year and has tallied close to 300 this year (Masters). Better gun control could lower down these huge numbers, I would hope one day there will someday be 0 mass shootings.

     Too many kids die of accidental shootings. For example,in March 2015, an 8 yr old boy found a loaded shotgun in his family's shed, and used it to accidentally shoot one of his friends during a game. Unfortunately, this is not uncommon.an articular by the IB Times said that “By the end of 2015, about 265 children under 18 picked up a firearm and shot someone by accident, and 83 of those shootings were fatal...41 of those deaths involved the shooters themselves,to , and most of the shootings involved toddlers or teens who were playing recklessly with the guns (Lidgett). If we had more gun control we could lower or even stop this forever.

     Some people think gun control is unnecessary because people are just going to find a way to get guns. Wilson from the Los Angeles times has a whole article about gun control is not the answer. However,In the end the only thing that is going to stop this is taking away all the guns. And if people smuggle in guns then i don't deal with them instead of the whole country, i hope you take this into to consideration.

                                                                                                          Sincerely,

                                                                                                                           Erik Cole

Ins keep, Steve. "In Iran, A Poet's 700-Year-Old Verses Still Set Hearts Aflame." NPR, 12 Feb. 2016,

WWW.NPR.org/sections/parallels/2016/02/12/466408554/in-iran-a-poets-700-year-old-verses-still-set-hearts-aflame.

Poetry Foundation. "Paul Laurence Dunbar." 2016,

WWW.poetry foundation.org/poems-and-poets/poets/detail/Paul-laurence-dunbar.