Dear President Clinton,
I think that guns should be banned because so many people are getting shot and killed, and it doesn’t make sense. People are losing their lives or becoming paralyzed, and other horrible accidents. Two of my uncles were both killed by guns a couple of years ago.
Kenya Madden, 13, Chicago
As President Clinton vowed last week to launch an attack on violence and its root causes, Chicago area children were writing to the president with their own advice on how to control crime in their neighborhoods.
The letters, many of them passionate and angry pleas to end street warfare, were in response to an article on gun control in the Tribune’s KidNews section. The Oct. 5 article stated that, according to the FBI, 2,804 children 18 or younger were murdered with guns last year in the United States. It presented the arguments of the National Rifle Association and Handgun Control Inc. and asked readers to write Clinton with their recommendations on what should be done.
More than 2,800 children, from rural areas to the inner city to suburbs, responded. Many of their letters did more than state a position on gun control; they described the fear, sadness and anger they feel when confronted with crime on their streets and in their lives.
Me and my mother is scared to walk down the street. And I can’t go outside because so many children is getting killed.
Christopher Gary, 4th grade
Chicago
. . . Even now, in the peaceful little town of Downers Grove, was a murder. It’s scary, and guns should be banned.
Kristin Catral, 11
Downers Grove
Most of the letters favored some kind of gun control, ranging from background checks and waiting periods to a total ban on gun sales to everyone except police officers and the military. Others opposed gun legislation, arguing that people need guns to protect themselves from street crime. Many stressed the responsibility that Clinton and other politicians have in solving the problem of crime.
You and Congress have got to work harder for gun control. If you could ask the gun companies to make fewer guns, and Congress could pass more laws to make it harder to buy guns, it would be a step in the right direction.
Mindy Gamboa, Steger
I am wondering if you even know about what happened to the boy in Cabrini Green who was gunned down by a sniper in the complex in the way to school? . . . It is going to take someone like you to put a foot down and say stop the violence in America not Somalia.
Steve Birle, Chicago
Finally, the letters indicated that tougher gun laws were not enough to stem the rising tide of violence, and that other measures also were needed. In particular, many children felt television and movies were too violent, and they favored stronger penalties for serious crimes.
I think movies and TV shows should not show so much violence . . . This causes more violence because when kids see this stuff all their life, they get so used to it that they go out and do the same thing.
Lindsey Recupito, 10, Steger
Please make some laws to stop guns from being made because kids of eight, nine, ten years and older are killing each other. If this continues there is going to be an empty world.
Talesha McCullum, Chicago
