Dear Next President,

My name is Lefty, I live in Westport, CT and the arguments over the second amendment interest me. While many people think that the debate about the second amendment is purely about controlling access to guns and having safer societies with less potential for gun violence, that is not the main consideration. Even though the main reason that gun control has been a hot topic as of late is because of several mass killings, I believe there is in fact another reason that makes this issue so crucial for our future. In the Constitution, the second amendment states that “The right to bear arms shall not be infringed upon”. The part of this that I find most intriguing is “Shall not be Infringed upon”

I believe that gun laws should not change in a significant way and the second amendment should not be tampered with. I believe this because the Constitution is something that we have been living by for a long time and its not something that the government should start tampering with; we need to try and preserve it. According to Listverse.com, gun control gives the government too much power. In the article it is stated that “They arm themselves for the possibility of government agents taking away their rights one by one until they live in a police state in which the government is able to do anything it wants because the civilian populace is unarmed and cannot resist.” This quote is interesting to look at because it’s about how some people view their guns as a form of protection over a government that many of them do not trust. In this view, once the people do not have guns, the government is free to keep adjusting laws to a defenceless crowd. Another point to consider is that the right to bear arms allows people to defend themselves from criminals. With new laws that change gun laws the America that Trump and Hilary grew up in could be changed by a tyranical government.

On the other hand, there is a valid concern about preventing guns from falling into the hands of the wrong people. That is why we have gun laws that require licenses for selling guns and background checks for buyers. However, it is not clear that making guns laws stricter would bring down crime. Making stricter gun laws has been proven ineffective in other countries that have tried it. An example of this is in the United Kingdom. The second firearms act in 1997 basically bans all civilians from having guns. Because of this, you would think that crime and murder rates would be lower than they were before the act was introduced, but that is not the case. A relevant quote from Listverse.com that proves gun laws don't always lead to less murders is “The rate for intentional homicide in the UK in 1996—the year of the Dunblane Massacre—was 1.12 per 100,000. It was 1.24 in 1997, when the Firearms Act went into effect, and 1.43 in 1998. The rate rose to a peak of 2.1”. This quote shows how, even though citizens did not have guns, the murder rates actually went slightly up, which shows that the gun restrictions really did not have a direct corellation with murder rates. I know that Trump and Hilary both have children of their own and want to keep them safe. But with this being said they have different views on how to keep them safe. Hilary thinks that gun laws and backround checks should be more strict while Trump does not.

In conclusion, we should not look to have more strict gun laws because it is unconstitutional and even in countries where this has been done it didn’t always reduce crime. Instead, we should make sure existing gun rules are enforced. Changing the second amendment would be a violation of peoples rights, as well as disregarding the Constitution that we have lived by for a very long time.