Dear Future President,

On an average day in the United States, 91 people are killed by legal guns. This number is made up of suicides, crime-related deaths and accidents. This I believe is unacceptable. Compared to countries that have stricter gun laws like France, the rate of people killed by guns in the United States is 25 times higher. It seems to me that something must be done, otherwise the needless deaths will continue. 

There are a two main ways that the death rate from guns can be lowered. The first thing that can be done is to bring in detailed background checks for all gun owners. At the moment, some states, like Connecticut require anyone who wants to buy a gun to go to the police station to have their fingerprints taken and to have a background check completed. This stops known felons and people who are unfit to have a gun (the mentally ill for example) from owning a gun. Unfortunately, most other states have no such laws.

The second way that the deaths can be reduced is by preventing private citizens from owning certain types of weapons. For example, assault rifles like the AR-15 should not be in private hands as they are designed to shoot multiple rounds very quickly. Even the inventor of these guns said that they should only be used by the military and police.

There are many people who do not support stricter laws on guns. One of their main arguments is that they say that the 2nd Amendment of the constitution guarantees them with the right to bear arms. I really do not think that this argument is reasonable. The Founding Fathers had no idea what kind of weapons would be developed in the future. In their day, guns were muskets that took several minutes to load and fired single shots. I am sure that the idea of civilians having guns that could kill dozens of people in a few minutes would have made the Founding Fathers think twice about what they wrote. Also, the need to keep a well armed militia has been replaced by the US armed forces, which is there to protect all Americans, not just individual homesteads or states.

There are 270 million guns in the United States and more are being manufactured every day. Unless something is done to limit the kinds of guns that people can own, or prevent the wrong types of people from owning guns, the number of gun-related deaths will only increase.

Best Regards Tom B.