Dear Representative Marchant:
My name is Hannah Carlisle. I will be one of your constituents once I become an adult. I am writing to you about gun control laws.
I would like to see stricter gun control laws set in place and more enforcement of existing laws. All of the school and other public shootings happening around the country have shown that the current gun laws and how they are being enforced are not effective. Many deaths could have been prevented if guns weren’t in the wrong hands.
Gun issues impact every individual in this country. Anyone could be the victim of gun violence. “In the U.S. in 2014,… firearms caused 33,599 deaths. Of these, there were 10,945 homicides, 21,334 suicides, and 586 accidental deaths” (Bruckner 150). “It is “enormously implausible” to deny that the correlation is evidence for a causal relationship in this case. Therefore, restricting access to firearms would reduce the number of deaths caused by firearms” (Bruckner 150). Schools are one of the groups most directly affected by this issue. Two of the worst school shootings in the past decade were at Virginia Tech with 32 deaths and Sandy Hook with 26 deaths (Lord). This problem is very severe. 60% of homicides in the US are by guns (“Guns in the US: The Statistics behind the Violence”). “From 1966 to 2012, nearly a third of the world's mass shootings took place in the United States” (Willingham and Ahmed). “The per capita incidence of… fire- arm related mortality is significantly higher in the US than in any other industrialized country” (Towers, et. al 1).
This issue has an impact on me since I am a high school student. Students in my community are concerned about school shootings. We are afraid of one occurring at a school in our community. The more people hear about mass shootings at schools and other places, the more likely these actions will continue to occur. “Several past studies have found that media reports of suicides and homicides appear to subsequently increase the incidence of similar events in the community” (Towers, et. al 1). Students in my town have gotten in trouble for threatening to shoot at schools. Many students at my school believe that action needs to be taken against gun violence. There was even a protest organized to support gun control at my school. School shootings can even affect students who weren’t at the scene of the shooting. “On a secondary level, the threat of mass shootings throughout schools is also damaging to mental health; safety and security are always paramount to a child’s healthy psychological development, and this constant anxiety and sense of danger will disrupt that sense of security, and put all children at risk of developing anxiety and mood disorders” (qtd. in Fagan). I would recommend improving background checks and raising the gun age. In this country, a person can “purchase a rifle or shotgun” at 18 years old (Diaz). I believe that a person still in high school should not be in possession of a gun. If one can’t drink at age 21, they also shouldn’t be able to own a gun until that age. It is clear that background checks for guns are not working as they should since many of the wrong people end up in possession of guns. Background checks need to start including private and online transactions (“Universal Background Checks”).
In Texas, there is “no law requiring firearms dealers to initiate background checks (Moritz). I believe that if everyone buying a gun went through a background check in this state, fewer shootings would occur because people convicted of felonies wouldn’t be able to buy guns. There need to be laws that require anyone buying a firearm to be background checked. “In Texas,… state and federal law allows Texans to buy semi-automatic rifles under 21 (Milburn and Bureau). An alternative action would be to keep gun laws the way they currently are and not enforce even these laws. Currently, at age 18, a person can buy a gun, at 21 they can buy a handgun, there’s not a license to carry a gun, handguns are allowed to be carried openly, firearms can be in a “home, vehicle or place of employment” (Farber). An example of one of these laws that aren’t enforced is the background check law. At the Virginia Tech Shooting, Seung-Hui Cho, the shooter, had “a history of mental illness. But the correct records were never sent to the FBI’s National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS)” (Lopez).
I advise you to propose amendments to the laws on gun control and speak on committees about better enforcement on gun control laws. What do you think about how the US and Texas specifically are handling guns? Do you also believe action needs to be taken against the lack of gun control? I urge you to do what’s best for our state and country and speak for stricter gun control laws and making sure that these laws are enforced. “Forty percent of gun sales… are conducted by unlicensed private sellers” (Hickey 5). This is obviously a loophole in the background check law, so it would be best to push for this law to be revised. Additionally, you could support S. 649 to be reintroduced. This “Plan focuses primarily on preventing those at risk of committing acts of violence and mass shootings from getting access to guns by extending the NICS to every gun buyer, and not just those who purchase firearms from a federally licensed firearms dealer, and ensuring that the background check system has complete information on people prohibited from having guns” (Hickey 6).
Thank you for your time and attention in reading this letter. Before I finish, I would like to recap on a few of my main points.
• The laws in place and their lack of enforcement are not successful in preventing gun violence from occurring.
• The US is experiencing many more deaths by guns than most countries in the rest of the world.
• Schools are one of the groups most affected by shootings.
• The age limit for acquiring a gun should be raised and background checks need to be applied to private sales of guns.
• S. 649 is a plan that could help solve some of the country’s gun issues.
Sincerely,
Hannah Carlisle