I want to talk to you today about a very serious issue that’s been avoided for far too long: reformation of gun laws. The people of our great nation have lost loved ones from the mass shootings at the Pulse Night Club in Florida, the Country Music Festival in Nevada, Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and most recently the Borderline Bar and Grill in California. Countless other mass shootings have occurred over the last few years and these tragic events have affected communities all across the United States. I believe that both the government and local communities should have the ability to protect their residents and in order for this to happen we need to have a sensible conversation regarding gun laws.

Now let me be clear: as president I shall ensure the constitutional right to bear arms is upheld. This is an undeniable right, but it is also important to remember so is the right to life. In order to protect both these rights our leaders must ensure our laws have kept up with technological advancements that have happened since the constitution was written.For far too long politicians have been afraid to have this conversation and have instead offered their “thoughts and prayers” to the families and communities affected when these tragedies occur. Your current leaders have failed to enact policies that protect you from these tragedies and I’m here to change that. Today I’m here to say that not only do these families deserve more than thoughts and prayers, but everyone here deserves more than that. You deserve a leader that will ensure new laws are passed that prevent these senseless acts of violence from happening. You deserve laws that will prevent violent and dangerous individuals from easily being able to cause catastrophic harm to our friends, families, and loved ones.

As president I will pass legislation that keeps guns away from malicious individuals while ensuring that these laws do not affect the rights of law abiding citizens. I will make universal background checks a standard procedure when purchasing a gun in order to prevent them from falling into the hands of mentally ill people. I will promote policies that bans high-capacity magazines and as well as assault rifles. These are tools that ordinary citizens have no use for in their daily lives and whose existence permits dangerous individuals to cause massive amounts of harm in an incredibly short amount of time. As president I will continue to uphold the rights this country was founded on while also protecting the lives of our citizens from modern danger.
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Commentary: I tried to write this using emotional language to try and sway the listeners. The first paragraph, especially when I stress the recent California shooting, was worded that way to hopefully make our class (and teacher) feel a bit more connected to our candidate since we’re presenting to them. I mentioned the “thoughts and prayers” bit because that was a phrase that was heavily trending with social media this year and since members of the Green Party tend to be younger I figured it would be a good way to mobilize our primary voter-base. I tried to showcase the Green Party’s stance on gun control policy by making the candidate advocate for a ban on assault rifles and high-capacity magazines while also pushing for background checks. I also tried to earn brownie points with our professor by mentioning the constitutional right to bear arms/right to life.

I know the Green Party also promotes handling things at a local level so I tried to mention that in the first paragraph but I didn’t want to emphasize it too much for the sake of time so I briefly mentioned it in the first paragraph. Feel free to change anything, but I thought this would take an appropriate amount of time to read since we’re only presenting for 10 minutes and we need to cover a lot of other topics besides gun control in our presentation.
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Sources:
"Local communities need to be able to regulate guns, as needed, to deal with their violence. So, we need to keep guns out of the hands of criminals. We need background checks, so that the mentally ill are not possessing and using guns. And we need to end the gun show loopholes, as well, because there's far too much violence from guns, which is not needed."
https://ballotpedia.org/Jill_Stein_presidential_campaign,_2016/Gun_control
“We call for the Pennsylvania legislature to ban assault weapons, ban high-capacity magazines, and strengthen background checks.”
http://www.gp.org/philly_greens_support_student_walkout
List of recent mass shootings
https://www.cnn.com/2013/09/16/us/20-deadliest-mass-shootings-in-u-s-history-fast-facts/index.html
https://www.nbcnews.com/news/us-news/shooting-reported-borderline-bar-grill-thousand-oaks-california-n933831
Us const
http://constitutionus.com/