Tag Archives: Constitution

Is the United States Really A Democracy?

The United States Constitution has been amended 17 times, and they have all been for extremely important reasons, such as the abolishing of slavery, and the women’s right to vote, but is there another major flaw in the Constitution that needs to be amended? The thing that people see is  beautiful about the United States is the freedom. We get to chose our leaders, and elect our president, or so most people think. While we

do get to vote for who we want to be our president, the real decision is up to these people in the image to the left, members of the electoral college. For years different organizations and groups have tried to get rid of the electoral college, but none have succeeded. What the electoral college actually is and what they do are kind of confusing, so I will say them in simple terms. On election day, voters vote for the candidate they want to be president. Whichever candidate gets the most votes in that state, their chosen electors go to the real election in the first week of December. They will then cast their vote, presumably based on who they said they would vote for, but only 29 states actually require electors to vote for who they pledged too. Whichever candidate receives the most electoral votes is then the president. When the Constitution was written in the 1787, the electoral college was a good idea because voters had very little, if any, opportunity to learn about the candidates, so it was the job of educated, state appointed electors. This system is, however, now severely outdated and badly needs to be removed because of voters ample opportunity to learn about candidates.   
The biggest flaw comes into view when you realise that 21 of state electors (not including Connecticut) can vote for whoever they want to, even if they pledged to vote for someone else. If you pledged that you would vote for a certain candidate, and you are representing nearly 600,000 people, you would think that you would vote for the person that the 600,000 people chose. What I don’t understand is when electors vote for someone completely different, and even sometimes someone who isn’t even running! You may think that this doesn’t happen very often, but it has happened in every single presidential election in U.S. history! You may also be thinking that it doesn’t really matter if one or two electors vote against whom they pledged to, because the vote has never been down to one or two votes, but it actually has. In the election of 1876, the electoral vote was 185 to 184, just barely giving Rutherford B. Hayes the presidency. I don’t know about you, but I would be very mad if the person I wanted to be president lost because my elector lied. I hope that after reading this blog, you can support those who are taking action to abolish the electoral college.   

~James

Gun Debate

Columbine, Aurora, and Sandy Hook. All scenes of mass shootings, killing the innocent. They were killed by not terrorists, not aliens, but citizens of the United States of America. They were killed because there is no law in this country greatly limiting the process of owning a gun. There are many debates as to whether or not an ordinary citizen should have the right to own a gun. Lawmakers, after the Sandy Hook shooting, are hard at work, banning certain dangerous semiautomatic firearms. Now, why not ban all firearms to begin with? The other side of the debate is that if we ban all guns, we are violating the second amendment. The second amendment states all citizens of the United States of America have “The right to keep and bear arms.”

I personally believe that we should ban all citizens from owning firearms. We should only give the trained and professional police officers guns. But, this would be in a way violating the constitution, therefore I propose that the national legislature immediately begins taking action in creating very strict laws. My suggestion is that all gun owners take an annual test to make sure they are mentally stable, properly know how to handle a gun, and will only use a gun at appropriate times. Another idea I have is to keep all guns at a shooting range for the public, and if anyone would like to use a gun for sport, they could simply keep it in a safe place from other people, and themselves in case they turn mentally insane. If I could change the Constitution, I would most definitely take out the second amendment, to create a safer community. What would you do?

~Angela Zhu

We Can Save Lives

Too many innocent people have recently been killed by the mighty wrath of guns. First, on July 20, 2012, a masked gunman ran into a Colarado movie theater, and killed 12 helpless people, also leaving 59 wounded. On August 5, 2012, another man went on a shooting spree at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin, leaving another 6 people dead. But the most shocking stat of all is that every day in America, 86 people are killed and 192 people are wounded by guns. That means that about 31,390 members of our nation die or are wounded each year by firearms. How can this staggering, seemingly hopeless number be reduced? Well, psychos and lunatic murderers will always exist, so the only way to minimize the killings is by much stricter gun control.

The time to strengthen our gun control regulations is now. Japan and Iceland both have extremely strict gun control laws and as a result, Iceland only had 1 gun related homicide and Japan had 11 in the entirety of 2009. Now wouldn’t that be nice? Some people argue that we need guns to protect ourselves against potential killers. But that is a ludicrous point, because if access to guns weren’t allowed so easily, then you wouldn’t have to protect yourselves. Also, it seems that whenever there is a mass shooting, it is never at somebody’s house, where the so-called “protection” is located. Some people also say that making gun control stricter would violate the Second Amendment, which protects an individual’s right to bear arms. But we can change amendments and our founding fathers who wrote the Constitution weren’t expecting all these new types of guns, like machine guns, M16’s, and other automatic weapons. We can avoid mass shootings, gun- related homicides, and other forms of gun violence by just making gun control harsher, or outlawing certain guns altogether. It’s worth it to save about 86 fellow Americans a day, because remember it could be you next! We can save lives!

~RayanVatti