Dear Future President,

To whomever you are, whichever side you’re on, and whatever you do or plan to do with our country, there is an issue that is steaming the minds of many people of which I need to address. You see, the right for us to own our own guns played a major role in establishing the United States, and we cannot let the loss of this crucial freedom be the cause for the downfall of this beloved country.

In the past, everyone used to own a gun. No one really used their guns, but the fact that we had them made us all feel a lot safer. But as we make our way to the present, we see crime rates rising, and some people want to take away our guns. But, when the guns go, the criminals are still here. They start trouble, and we’re suddenly left defenseless. As you can tell, this doesn’t make anyone feel safe.

I would like to draw to your attention that it is our constitutional right to own guns, if we so choose to. As the second amendment states, “The right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.” This statement blatantly shows that people who wish to ban guns need to back off. To have a weapon is not the problem. To use the weapon for offensive purposes is the real issue.

To expand upon my previous statement, I’d like to throw you a statistic. It’s a scary statistic, but bear with me. There was a total of 892 mass shootings from December 2012 to February 2016. That’s a very large number, right? Nobody would ever trust anyone with a gun, you’d think! But in reality, a majority of the U.S. population understands that this is a risk we have to take to maintain our right to guns. In fact, 72 percent of Americans believe we should NOT be banned from guns. The thoughts of our brave nation should not be ignored.

Overall, I think we can agree that the removal of guns is not the necessary course of action to take. We should be pushing stricter background checks and enforcing harder punishments for the misuse of guns, instead of disrespecting the rights of our fellow citizens.

Sincerely,

Regan G