Dear Future President,

Gun violence is a major issue in America and we have neglected it for too long. According to the Guardian, the United States’ gun homicide rate is 25 times that of other high-income countries. Canada, Australia, and Japan have all taken measures to enforce gun control; when will the US learn from them?

The US should require more restrictions on the selling of armed weapons in order to decrease the amount of death and injury. According to the Gun Violence Archive, the US has suffered over 48,000 gun incidences so far in 2016, with over 3,000 victims that are young children and teens. This cannot continue to happen. The US must learn from other countries how to implement effective gun policies.

According to the Council on Foreign Relations, Canada classifies armed weapons into three categories: nonrestricted, restricted, and prohibited. Canada effectively controls the distribution of weapons by requiring that citizens must obtain a federal registration certificate to buy a restricted weapons. Additionally, Canada implemented the 1995 Firearms Act, which required owner registrations and license for long guns and subsequently banned half of all registered guns, after a student used a semiautomatic weapon to kill 14 students and injure a dozen others in Montreal Engineering School.

In 1996 in Australia, a young man massacred 35 people and injured 23 others in Port Arthur. Australia immediately implemented the National Agreement on Firearms, which according to the Australian Institute of Criminology, prohibited automatic and semiautomatic weapons, stiffened licensing and ownership regulations, and took about 650,000 weapons out of circulation. Since then, Australia has not seen any gun-related mass killings.

Japan has an extraordinarily low gun homicide rate, which is the lowest in the world at about 1 in 10 million according to the Guardian. Japan only permits shotguns, airguns, guns that have research of industrial purpose, and those used for competitions. Any citizen that wants to access specialty weapons must obtain instruction, pass a written, mental, and drug test as well as a background check, and inform authorities on how the weapon will be used. As a result, Japan has an incredibly low crime rate.

Control guns and save lives. When will we learn from our mistakes? When will the government finally take action to prevent further unnecessary deaths of innocent people? We must learn from other countries and take the initiative to save our people and our country. We must increase gun control before it is too late.

Sincerely,

Annie S.