What problems should Congress mainly focus on in 2014?

Safety of the citizens of the United States.

We hope Congress feels the same way and will strongly pursue the issue of gun control.

Everyone in the U.S. knows what happened in Connecticut on Dec. 14, 2012. At Sandy Hook Elementary School, 20-year-old Adam Lanza burst into the school and murdered 20 first-grade students and eight teachers. He committed this horrific crime with his own weapons.

Just six years before, Seung-Hui Cho entered Virginia Tech, shot 32 students, and wounded another 17 with his own weapons. Cho committed these crimes two separate times in one day.

Some things have been done about these incidences. A month after the shooting in Connecticut, President Obama announced proposals for increased gun control. His proposals included universal background checks, an assault weapons ban and limiting magazine capacity to 10 cartridges.

Those proposals didn’t do very well. They certainly didn’t stop Aaron Alexis, who fatally shot 12 people on a Navy base in Washington, D.C., on Sept. 16, 2013.

We want Congress to make stricter gun laws throughout the country for the sake of all Americans.

To those people who think that everyone should bear arms, we say that would just increase the chances of something horrible happening.

Samentha Herrick,

Marisa Carter