|
"Helpng publicize our 2025 essay contest is one the ways in which you can help fight the disinformation campaign being waged by Donald Trump and his administration."
Dear Friends,
The April 19 deadline for students to enter our 2025 Americans Against Gun Violence National High School Essay Contest is now just under two weeks away. We'll be awarding at least $15,000 in total scholarships again this year distributed among 12 winners, with individual awards ranging from $3,000 to $250, and with the option of giving additional awards, as we've done in most past years, if we receive more than 12 outstanding essays. The contest is open to all U.S. high school students in grades 9-12.
To enter this year's contest, students must submit an essay of 500 words or fewer describing their thoughts about the following excerpt from the late Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas’s opinion in the 1972 case of Adams v. Williams:
A powerful lobby dins into the ears of our citizenry that these gun purchases are constitutional rights protected by the Second Amendment, which reads, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed."
There is under our decisions no reason why stiff state laws governing the purchase and possession of pistols may not be enacted….There is no reason why all pistols should not be barred to everyone except the police.
We send notices of our contest every year to more than a thousand high school educators across the country. Up to this point in our 2025 contest, though, we've received far fewer student entries than in most past years. I believe that the main reason for the relatively low number of entries so far this year is probably the highly toxic current political atmosphere in our country that makes both educators and students fear retaliation if they express points of view that run contrary to the Trump administration's propaganda. For this reason, the role of individual supporters like you is more important than ever in getting out the message about our high school essay contest this year. Helpng publicize our 2025 essay contest is one the ways in which you can help fight the disinformation campaign being waged by Donald Trump and his administration.
Although the deadline for students to enter our 2025 National High School Essay contest is now just under two weeks away, there's still plenty of time for students to write an outstanding essay, and all the background information they need is available on the Americans Against Gun Violence website. I'd greatly appreciate your help in bringing the contest and the approaching April 19 deadline to the attention of any high school students with whom you have contact. And please let me know in a reply to this email if you'd be willing to help choose the winners in this year's contest by being an essay reader. Finally, please consider making a tax-deductible donation to the essay contest fund, if you're able, to help ensure that we'll be able to continure to host the contest in future years. The essay contest is run entirely with volunteer labor, and 100% of donations to the essay contest fund go directly to student awards.
Thanks for your support of Americans Against Gun Violence and our annual National High School Essay Contest.
Sincerely,
Bill Durston, M.D.
President, Americans Against Gun Violence
Americans Against Gun Violence Essay Contest Prompts 2018-2024
(Click on the year of the contest to read the winning essays)
2018: “The time has now come that we must adopt stringent gun control legislation comparable to the legislation in force in virtually every civilized country in the world.” (Statement by the late Senator Thomas Dodd of Connecticut in a speech on the floor of the U.S. Senate in June of 1968)
2019: “The Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have ‘some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.’” (Excerpt from the majority opinion authored by the late Supreme Court Justice Harry Blackmun in the 1980 case of Lewis v. United States, in which Blackman quoted from the Supreme Court’s 1939 Miller decision.)
2020: “Firearm regulations, to include bans of handguns and assault weapons, are the most effective way to reduce firearm-related injuries.” (Position statement of the American Academy of Pediatrics, published in the journal, Pediatrics, in April 2000)
2021: “Describe the effect on American youth of the confluence of our country’s longstanding gun violence epidemic with the current Covid-19 pandemic and the threat of violent insurrection; and describe what role you believe the adoption of stringent gun control laws should play at this critical time in our nation’s history.”
2022: “If I were writing the Bill of Rights now, there wouldn't be any such thing as the Second Amendment…. This has been the subject of one of the greatest pieces of fraud - I repeat the word ‘fraud’ - on the American public by special interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.” (Statement made by the late Supreme Court Chief Justice Warren Burger during an interview on the PBS News Hour on December 16, 1991)
2023: “Describe your thoughts about lockdown drills conducted in response to the threat of shootings on American school campuses.”
2024: “In creating constitutional obstacles, where none previously existed, to the adoption of stringent gun control laws in the United States comparable to the laws in other high income democratic countries, the Supreme Court’s 2008 Heller decision and its progeny are literally death sentences for tens of thousands of Americans annually.” (Excerpt from the 2024 mission statement of Americans Against Gun Violence)
|
|
