Dear Future President,

In America today there are many different gun control laws; they vary between many different aspects of firearm usage, but there are many laws that are not used correctly. All legally registered firearm owning citizens of the United States are impacted in some way by gun laws, and many, if not all, of these laws are flawed. Most of these laws are enacted by politicians based on knee jerk reactions to terrible firearm related events; school shootings, attempted presidential assassinations, and gang related murders involving firearms, the list goes on and on.

In general, a gun law put into place for a single aspect for urban city crimes should not be put into place across an entire state or country. This is one of the first flaws I have seen about gun laws. An example of this is this is Chicago, Illinois which has one of the highest firearm killings in the United States. There a citizen needs to have a state permit, an owner permit, and a complete background check to acquire a firearm from a dealer. These laws were likely put into place because of the history of violent crimes in Chicago, but the laws affect the entire state.

The second flaw is why gun control laws have never worked in the first place. Today in America there are more than 350 million registered firearms in the United states.(http://www.infowars.com/10-reasons-why-gun-control-wont-work/). This number only leaves the question, how many unregistered firearms are roaming the United states today? Nobody knows the exact answer to this question, but there are estimates saying that about two out of ten firearms are properly registered. This means that there are probably billions of firearms in total across the U.S today. So how does the U.S government keep track of those firearms? The answer is we can not! It simply is not possible. Let me give you an example. If I bought a gun from a friend of mine that he had legally purchased and registered, then I sell it to someone I don’t know, and they don’t register it it is an unregistered firearm that is off of the grid, from there it could end up anywhere including in a criminal’s possession. This is why in its simplest form, gun control in the U.S doesn’t work, but there are many ways that we can improve on this. Perhaps following in the footsteps of other countries could lead to a better gun control system.

If the United States wanted to lower firearm violence I think that they need to take a lesson from Sweden. For example if a citizen of Sweden wanted to have a firearm in their possession they would need to take a year long hunter safety course, then they would need to pass a written and shooting test. After this any firearm in possession would need to be kept in a locked gun safe. Even though this makes acquiring a firearm much more difficult, results are that Sweden has one of the lowest murderous shooting rates in the world.(http://www.guncite.com/swissgun-kopel.html)

I think that much of what gun control exists for had the right intentions when it was put into place, but its execution was very poor. If the next U.S president would fix all of the errors of gun control I would probably become a fully fledged believer of it, but until that happens I will always have my opinion that gun control laws could be improved in many different ways.

Sincerely, 

Logan