Dear Future President:

Gun control is one of the major problems that causes division in our country. Since the second amendment to the Constitution was ratified in 1791, people have believed that every citizen of the United States of America should be allowed to protect themselves with guns. On January 4, 2016, President Obama passed another one of his many executive orders, overruling Congress’s decisions and making people’s private mental health issues public. This executive order turns even a minor issue, such as past depression, into a reason for someone to not be allowed to own a gun. This executive order goes directly against the second amendment of the Constitution. Along with making regular firearms more difficult to obtain, there have been attempts on trying to ban assault weapons.

In 1994, The Assault Weapons Law was put into effect banning semi-automatic rifles as defined by the law. The features that makes these guns “assault weapons” are only cosmetic and is not what most people think are assault weapons. The common image of these guns are military style guns that can spray bullets, but this law bans guns that are just normal rifles with simple cosmetic differences. This law ended in 2004 and was not renewed because it was not effective. According to the FBI, only 390 people were murdered by “assault weapons” in 2003, the last full year of the ban, making 2.7% of murders committed by using “assault weapons.” This shows that the law was not even worth passing because it did not help anything. In 2014, ten years after this law expired the number of murders by “assault weapons” became even lower, dropping to 248 murders. In 1994, a person was eleven times more likely to be beaten to death than killed by an assault weapon. In 2008, Chicago banned guns completely in their state. Criminals that do not abide by the law will not change their ways when a new law is enacted that says they cannot have guns. Therefore, in 2015, shootings went up by 13% in Chicago since 2014.

A solution to these gun bans is to crack down more on street gun crime and sales more than the people that want to protect themselves from these criminals. It makes no sense to take protection away from the people who have done nothing wrong. The statistics show that these bans do not help lower murder rates. One way that the government can help take guns from criminals is adding background checks to gun shows. If someone buys a gun at a regular store, they must go through extensive background checks, but at a gun show, just about anyone can buy a gun. Another way to help is to make punishment for violent weapon related crime so severe that is won’t be worth it for any criminal to commit a crime. Hopefully these suggestions can help make a difference in our nation’s protection.

Thank you,

Jenna Carballo

                                                                             Works Cited                                                                                     FBI. “Table 2.12: by Weapon, 2003” FBI:UCR. N.d. 24 Oct. 2016. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-                            u.s/2003/table2-12_weapon03.xls/view

FBI. “2014 Crime in the United States” FBI:UCR. N.d. 24 Oct. 2016. https://ucr.fbi.gov/crime-in-the-                      u.s/2014/crime-in-the-u.s.-2014/tables/expanded-homicide-                                                                            data/expanded_homicide_data_table_8_murder_victims_by_weapon_2010-2014.xls

Office of the Press Secretary. “FACT SHEET: New Executive Actions to Reduce Gun Violence and Make                Our Communities Safer.” The White House. 04 Jan. 2016. 24 Oct. 2016.                                                          https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/2016/01/04/fact-sheet-new-executive-actions-                  reduce-gun-violence-and-make-our