Americans Against Gun Violence congratulates the winners of our 2025 National High School Essay Contest. To enter the contest, students were required to submit an original essay of 500 words or fewer* describing their thoughts about the following excerpt from Supreme Court 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 received more than 600 entries from high school students across the country in this year’s contest. The winners were chosen via a rigorous process in which more than a dozen Americans Against Gun Violence members participated in reading and rating essays blinded to any student identifying information. In the essay contest instructions, we announced that we would be awarding a total of at least $15,000 in scholarships to twelve winners, with the option of providing additional awards, as we’ve done in most past years, if we received more than 12 outstanding essays. Again this year, our readers felt there were indeed more than 12 outstanding essays, and we are therefore awarding a total of $21,600 in scholarships divided among 32 winners.

While we are pleased to announce the winners of this year’s essay contest, we are deeply troubled by the fact there continues to be a need for high school students to think and write about the epidemic of gun violence that disproportionately affects our nation’s children and youth. Those of us in older generations should have stopped this epidemic long ago. It is also with a mixture of appreciation on the one hand and distress on the other that we note that the high school students chosen as winners in this year’s contest demonstrate a far greater understanding of the true history and intent of the Second Amendment than the majority of the American public, our elected officials, and even the current majority of Supreme Court justices. Finally, we are deeply troubled by the fact that this year more than ever, many students have not felt secure in having their names and/or the names of their high schools published in association with their essays. We don’t fault the students who chose not to reveal this information. Rather, we fault the toxic culture in our country – a culture that has gotten dramatically worse since Donald Trump began his second term as President in January of this year – that makes students not only fear for their lives every day they go to school, but that makes them fear retaliation if they openly express their views about our country’s shameful epidemic of gun violence. It is part of our mission at Americans Against Gun Violence to overcome this toxic culture as a step toward stopping the gun violence epidemic.

This year’s scholarships awards bring the total sum of awards that we’ve given students in the eight year history of our essay contest to over $132,000.  Donations to support our annual high school essay contest are tax deductible to the full extent allowed by state and federal laws, and 100% of donations to the essay contest fund go directly to student awards.

The top-ranked winners in our 2025 National High School Essay Contest and their essays (or excerpts from them) are presented below.

 

First Place Winner

$3,000 Scholarship Award

Lauren Stanger

Cumberland County Technical Education Center, Vineland, New Jersey

The Cost of Misinterpretation

…“A powerful lobby dins into the ears of our citizenry….” Justice William O. Douglas’s words from Adams v. Williams echo like a warning unheeded. Over half a century later, the “dinning” has become deafening, and the consequences deadly. As we reckon with the legacy of District of Columbia v. Heller (2008) – the case that severed the Second Amendment from its historical roots – we must ask: what is the cost of constitutional distortion?…(Read the full essay)

 

Second Place Winner

$2,500 Scholarship Award

(Author’s name and High School withheld at author’s request)

Untitled

The debate over handgun ownership often garlands itself in constitutional folklore, a nostalgia play where words like “liberty” float untethered from the realities of carnage. In Adams v. Williams (1972), Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas saw through the fetishism of the pistol. His opinion did not genuflect to the Second Amendment but rather stripped it to its bare intent: not a charter for private arsenals but a cautionary clause yoked to state security….(Read the full essay)

 

Third Place Co-Winner

$2,000 Scholarship Award

Hannah Li

Valley Christian High School, San Jose, California

Half A Truth – Whole Lives Lost

… The half-truth that the gun lobby “dins into the ears of our citizenry” is the second half of the Second Amendment: “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” But the full truth is that the amendment begins with: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State…”… The gun lobby has built its influence on half a truth, and whole lives are lost because of it….(Read the full essay)

 

Third Place Co-Winner

$2,000 Scholarship Award

Leah Laku

North Forney High School, Forney, Texas

The Sound My Body Remembers

Where I’m from, bullets mean war. In South Sudan, I learned their sound before I knew my letters. I watched them transform marketplaces into graveyards and schoolyards into battlefields. Before I came to America, I believed I was leaving that violence behind. I was wrong….(Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s name withheld at author’s request)

Evanston Township High School, Evanston, Illinois

The Tainted History of the Second Amendment

Reading Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas’s dissent in the Adams v. Williams decision led me to question the interpretation of the Second Amendment that is widely accepted today….In doing so, I found that southern states used “well regulated militias” to suppress slave uprisings. I also found that groups of frontiersmen used firearms to drive “the red man and the beast of the forest” from their lands. And I discovered that even today, many defenders of the Second Amendment still exhibit racist notions of protecting the United States of America from non-Whites….(Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

Noelle Kim

Fairmont Preparatory Academy, Anaheim, California

Freedom at Gunpoint

In his dissenting opinion in the 1972 case of Adams v. Williams, Supreme Court Justice William Douglas warned of a dangerous distortion in American culture and constitutional law – a distortion that twists the Second Amendment into a justification for virtually unlimited access to what have been appropriately referred to as “weapons of mass destruction;” a distortion that wrongfully equates safety regulations with tyranny; and a distortion rooted in multi-million dollar lobbying schemes, with vested interests placing monetary profit over public safety….(Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

Kaylee Yoon

Cherry Hill, New Jersey

An Illusion of Freedom vs. Real Public Safety

From a young age, we are taught to memorize that the Second Amendment guarantees “…the right of the people to keep and bear arms,” with this phrase being drilled into our memory. Rarely do we focus on the first part of the sentence: “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State….”…. The Second Amendment, as it is currently interpreted, prioritizes an illusion of freedom over real public safety. If we continue to allow this misinterpretation to prevail, tens of thousands of innocent civilians, including thousands of children and youth, will continue to die every year in our country of senseless, preventable gunshot wounds. (Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s name and High School withheld at author’s request)

These Students Don’t Practice Lockdown Drills Anymore

She was sixteen. She had a baby sister, loved chemistry, and dreamed of going to Harvard. ….One morning, in the middle of fourth period, a boy walked into her classroom with a gun. In seconds, her future was stolen….He was seven, just learning how to read chapter books, excited to show his teacher a drawing of his dog. He didn’t even understand what a “mass shooting” was. But by the end of that school day, he had become one more victim….(Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

Sofia Millner Calvo

Littleton High School, Littleton, Colorado

More Than a Constitutional Right – A Call for Life

…[W]e live in a country founded on the principle that we all have certain inalienable rights, and that among these rights are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Our country’s epidemic of gun violence, which is now the leading cause of death for U.S. children and youth, steals all of these rights from us and makes us even afraid to go to school….(Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

Adarsh Magesh

North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics, Durham, North Carolina

Some “Downs” Are Avoidable

Alex Schachter was fourteen when he died at his desk on February 14, 2018. A talented trombonist who had just earned a spot in the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School band, Alex spent his final evening completing an essay on World War II tank battles. In his notebook was a poem: “Life is like a roller coaster, it has some ups and downs… it may be hard to breathe but you just have to push through…” Alex never got the chance to push through. The AR-15 that ended his life was purchased legally, in accordance with Florida’s reputation for “respecting Second Amendment rights.”….(Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s name withheld at author’s request)

Olympic Heights Community High School, Boca Raton, Florida

The USA’s Most Damaging Revisionist History Campaign – The Misrepresentation of the Second Amendment

… The misrepresentation of the Second Amendment by the gun lobby has been so effective that most people have no idea that a constitutional right to private gun ownership didn’t exist prior to the Supreme Court’s rogue 2008 Heller decision, in which a narrow 5-4 majority of justices ruled for the first time in U.S. history that the Second Amendment conferred an individual right to gun ownership unrelated to service in a “well regulated militia.” As long as the American public remains ignorant of the true history and intent of the Second Amendment, and until we demand that the Heller decision and its progeny be reversed, the weak gun control laws currently under consideration, even if adopted, will have little effect….(Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s name withheld at author’s request)

Fremont High School, Sunnyvale, California

The Second Amendment on Trial

Bang! My gavel hits the table and the deliberation of the Second Amendment begins. In the courtroom of my mind, The Constitution, The Global Perspective, and the Youth of America are waiting to testify before me. The question on which I must rule is: “What does the Second Amendment truly protect – and at what cost?”…. As I, the judge, deliberate, I realize that the reinterpretation of the Second Amendment in the Heller decision has cost us too much – the archaic language of the Amendment has been exploited to justify a culture of fear and violence….(Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s name withheld at author’s request)

DeBakey High School for Health Professions, Houston, Texas

What About Our Right to Live?

… I used to believe the Second Amendment meant any American could own any gun, anytime. That’s what I’d heard in school, on the news, and from politicians….So I have to ask: whose freedom are we really protecting? Because when I see classmates crying during lockdown drills or hear about another school massacre on the news, it doesn’t feel like freedom. It feels like abandonment. It feels like betrayal. And it makes me wonder if the so-called right to bear arms is being valued more than our actual right to live….(Read the full essay)

 

$1,000 Scholarship Award Winner

Mario Fernandez

Wilcox High School, Wilcox, Arizona

Untitled

…Justice Douglas’s words provided me with the realization that the Constitution is not absolute; it’s meant to be of the people. And if the interpretation we have of it is costing lives, we must have the courage to reimagine it. In the end, this essay contest didn’t just get me to consider a single Supreme Court justice’s opinion – it got me to want to be among a generation that refuses to normalize gun violence. (Read the full essay)

 

$250 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s name withheld at author’s request)

Olympia High School, Olympia, Washington

Beyond the Right to Bear Arms: The Right to Peace

When I was young, my grandfather, a general in the Philippine Air Force, would warn me to avoid crowded places….In the Philippines, even during peaceful times, gun violence was always a looming threat….When I moved to the United States, I thought that fear was left behind, until I went through my first lockdown drill….

 

$250 Scholarship Award Winner

Parshv Patel

(Author’s High School withheld at author’s request)

The Right to Life Before the Right to Arms

When I first moved to the United States two years ago, I was introduced to more than new customs and schools. I was introduced to lockdown drills. At sixteen, I thought these drills prepared us for earthquakes or fires. But my heart sank when I learned the truth: we were practicing for a gunman. For the first time, the phrase, “the right to bear arms,” wasn’t a conceptual constitutional idea. It was a shadow following over every classroom, every backpack, and every ordinary day….

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Hattie Shon

Skyline High School, Salt Lake City, Utah

Rewrite the Narrative

Year after year, organizations like the NRA have pushed a narrative that the Second Amendment guarantees an unrestricted individual right to own and carry any kind of weapon…. The media and TV often reinforce the idea that “strong men” carry guns. Gun-toting characters are portrayed as tough, heroic, and powerful in movies, television, and advertisements. This image of the hyper-masculine, armed man doesn’t just glamorize violence – it equates strength with the ability to dominate or kill….(Read the full essay)

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Sara Rahim Ramzan Ali Punjwani

Dr. Thomas E. Randle High School, Richmond, Texas

“The Second Amendment Says What?”

My history teacher asks our class, “The Second amendment says what?” We all respond, “The right to bear arms!”  Some students laugh and pretend with their hands that they’re shooting pistols. Until I read the prompt for this year’s Americans Against Gun Violence essay contest, that’s all I’d ever known about the Second Amendment. In school and through the news media, I had been taught one thing about the Amendment: that it gives Americans the right to own guns….Justice Douglas’s words challenged my prior conception about the Second Amendment and forced me to reconsider not just what the Amendment says, but how it’s been interpreted – and how that interpretation impacts our daily lives….(Read the full essay)

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Zoe Otieno

Lakeville South High School, Lakeville, Minnesota

From Freedom to Fear

In his 1972 opinion in Adams v. Williams, Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas…envisioned a country where strong laws could regulate or even eliminate civilian handgun ownership. That vision feels nearly impossible now, largely due to the influence of powerful lobbying groups like the NRA and widespread misinterpretations of constitutional rights. The “powerful lobby” Douglas referenced has succeeded in framing any serious discussion about gun control as un-American, even when lives are at stake. But what about our freedom to live without fear – fear of school shootings, of gun violence in our neighborhoods, of accidental deaths in our homes?….(Read the full essay)

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s name and high school withheld at author’s request)

Reclaiming the Second Amendment for a Better Future

Justice William O. Douglas’s 1972 opinion in Adams v. Williams forces us to reconsider how the Second Amendment is interpreted in modern America. His statement, “There is no reason why all pistols should not be barred to everyone except the police,” may sound extreme at first. But after living through the reality of gun violence in America, I no longer see it as radical – I see it as necessary. I’ve lived in India, South Korea, and now the United States. Of the three, America is the only place where I’ve had to participate in lockdown drills, worry about school shootings, and see classmates flinch at the sound of a fire alarm – just in case it isn’t a drill….(Read the full essay)

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s name and high school withheld at author’s request)

The Gun Lobby Is Loud – We Have To Be Louder

Ever since I can remember, I have had to get down on my knees and cower in a corner together with my classmates. We were practicing – practicing to face the threat of gun violence – a real threat in my hometown of New Orleans….In America, the drills are just part of growing up. At school, kids should feel safe. At the very least, they should not have to cower in fear and silence. The American lobby for gun rights is so loud that the country cannot hear over it…. What I’ve learned through this contest is that we – the students, the ones who practice hiding silently in classrooms – have to be louder than the gun lobby….(Read the full essay)

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s name and high school withheld at author’s request)

“In Order to Form a More Perfect Union”

The Preamble to the United States Constitution articulates that Founders “ordain[ed] and establish[ed]” it “in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty.”…As Justice Douglas stated more than half a century ago, constitutionally and ethically, gun possession can and should be limited to persons serving in a “well regulated militia,” the modern equivalents of which are police departments and the National Guard. By raising awareness of the truth about the Second Amendment and the need for more stringent gun control laws, my generation and I can help “form a more perfect Union” and overcome a major obstacle to our Constitution’s promise of ensuring “domestic Tranquility.” (Read the full essay)

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Rushil Yarrabolu

West-Windsor Plainsboro High School North, Princeton Junction, New Jersey

A Right to Safety: Rethinking the Second Amendment

There is a moment – hushed, weighty – when the classroom is locked down during an active shooter drill. Lights off. Blinds closed. Thirty held breaths, waiting, wondering: Is this one real? My generation came into the world in a nation where this fear has become the norm. But it should not be. In America, the right for school age children and youth to live, learn, and thrive has become subordinate to another purported right: the virtually unfettered freedom of almost anyone beyond a certain age to own and carry deadly weapons….(Read the full essay)

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Audrey Ringer

Lincoln High School, Wisconsin Rapids, Wisconsin

The Illusion of Freedom

They tell us we are free. Free to speak. Free to dream. Free to bear arms. But I wonder, what is the value of freedom when it is built atop fear? What does liberty mean in a land where children die in classrooms, where backpacks are checked for bullets instead of books, and where playgrounds echo not with laughter, but with sirens….We quote the Second Amendment like scripture…”A well regulated Militia,” we begin, ignoring that we are no longer defending against redcoats but reckoning with red-stained hallways….

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Darianna Pando

Odessa Collegiate Academy, Odessa, Texas

Untitled

Reading Justice William O. Douglas’s opinion in Adams v. Williams gave me a sense of clarity I didn’t expect. He questioned a belief that’s been so deeply embedded into American culture – that unrestricted access to firearms is a constitutional right guaranteed by the Second Amendment. As a high school student who has grown up with active shooter drills as a regular part of my education, I found his words refreshing, even bold. It made me ask a simple but vital question: what is our country prioritizing more – its guns, or the lives of its children?…

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Isis Mack

Howard W. Blake High School, Tampa, Florida

Ask the Five Year-Old Hiding Under the Desk

I still remember my first school shooter drill. I was only 5 years old, a young, pure little girl who had never felt fear like that before. I remember hiding under my desk, unsteady breath shaking in my chest, small hands gripping the floor as the bell stopped and that haunting beep echoed through the room. Office staff rattled the doors, banging loudly, mimicking a shooter. That day I realized there are people in this world who want to murder children. And I asked my teacher, “Why are people allowed to have guns if we’re not at war?” She looked at me and said, “I don’t know, Isis.” She didn’t have an answer….

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Joey Lieberson

Cherry Hill High School East, Cherry Hill, New Jersey

Our Right to Security: When Collective Safety Matters More Than Individual Pride

Security: the state of being free from danger or threat. Many argue that carrying a gun provides them with a means of personal protection and self-defense against danger. However, when does this means become the real danger to our country? While some interpret the Second Amendment as a personal right to self-defense, the overwhelming danger guns present to our country, especially youth, illustrates that we must prioritize collective safety over individual gun ownership….

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Nikita Prokopenko

Walt Whitman High School, Bethesda, Maryland

How the Gun Lobby Distorts the Second Amendment: The Cost of “Freedom” in America

Gun ownership is often treated as a fundamental part of American freedom. But for students like me, that “freedom” feels more like a constant reminder of danger than a privilege. In Adams v. Williams, Justice William O. Douglas pointed out how “a powerful lobby dins into the ears of our citizenry that these gun purchases are constitutional rights protected by the Second Amendment.” That lobby, the NRA and its backers, has been fueling easy gun accessibility for decades, insisting no questions are asked….Meanwhile, the rest of the world watches in disbelief. We have 120.5 guns for every 100 people – and the consequences speak for themselves. Our firearm homicide rate is 19 times France’s, 33 times Australia’s, and 77 times Germany’s. No amount of pride in our patriotic “freedom” rhetoric can make these numbers any less tragic….

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

Julia Beech

Lamar High School, Houston, Texas

American Fictions

For the past 234 years, America’s defense of widespread gun ownership has been rooted in the idea of preserving an armed militia. Yet in my home state of Texas, 4,630 lives were lost to gun violence in 2024 alone. Fewer than 3.6% of these deaths involved police, and none were attributed to militias. When faced with an epidemic that steals thousands of lives – often prematurely – the appropriate response is not inaction, but decisive measures to restore order. Instead, we cling to the illusion that guns remain a net positive for society….

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

From a Student Attending High School in Winterville, North Carolina

(Author’s Name and Name of High School Withheld at Author’s Request)

A Gateway Into Productive and Educational Discussion

…As someone who has been immersed in pro-gun rhetoric my entire life, I never bothered to do my own research…. I had no idea that up until that 2008 [Heller] decision the Court agreed with Justice Douglas that there is “no reason why stiff state laws governing the purchase and possession of pistols may not be enacted.” I always assumed the idea of regulating guns was a modern idea. However gun policies had been put in place since 1876 mostly without issue until the Heller case.  This puts the discourse over the interpretation of the Second Amendment into a different light. Overall I think Supreme Court Douglas’s quote [in Adams v. Williams] is a fantastic gateway into educating American citizens and creating a landscape for productive discussion….

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s Name and Name and Location of High School Withheld at Author’s Request)

Reconstructing Liberty: Youth Perspectives on the Second Amendment’s Evolving Legacy

Justice William O. Douglas’s 1972 dissent in Adams v. Williams reads like a prophecy unheeded. His assertion that “stiff state laws” could constitutionally restrict pistol ownership – even banning them entirely for non-police – collides with modern America’s lethal exceptionalism: over 4,500 annual youth firearm deaths, a crisis the Surgeon General now classifies as a public health emergency. This dissonance demands we interrogate the Second Amendment’s transformation from collective safeguard to individual absolutism – and whether Douglas’s vision might yet reclaim its original intent….

 

$100 Scholarship Award Winner

(Author’s Name and Name and Location of High School Withheld at Author’s Request)

Untitled

In my little Southern town, gun violence ain’t just on the news. It’s in the stories we whisper at school and the candlelight vigils on porches. I’ve had classmates lose loved ones to shootings. I even lost a classmate to gun violence on prom night – a night that was supposed to be filled with memories, not mourning. I’ve sat through active shooter drills, heart racing, wonderin’ if one day it won’t just be a drill. And let me tell you – no child should have to feel that way, no matter where they’re from or what color they are….Justice Douglas said there’s no reason pistols shouldn’t be barred from everyone except the police. Whether folks agree or not, his words should make us think. Are we protectin’ freedom – or just a culture of violence we’re too scared to let go of?

 

* Note: Students are given the opportunity to edit their original essays, if they wish, in order to expand upon or add additional material in support of their original themes in the interval between their being chosen as essay contest winners and the time their essays are posted on our website. For this reason, the length of some of the essays posted on our website may exceed the original 500 word essay contest limit.