Teen Girl’s Pro-Gun Video Goes Viral On YouTube, Racks Up 2 Million Views

A teen girl’s pro-gun video has gone viral, attracting more than two million viewers to watcher her impassioned plea against legislation restricting guns.

Sarah Merkle, 15, has been shooting guns since she was 7 and is a member of the Maryland State Rifle Club. In the teen girl’s pro-gun video she implores legislators not to pass stricter gun control laws, saying they wouldn’t reduce gun violence but instead would be “liberating American citizens of our constitutional rights.”

Merkle told the representatives that her shooting has made her eligible for scholarships at several universities, but the new gun law would put those in jeopardy and could put and end to scholastic shooting teams.

“Achieving stricter gun control laws would obliterate any opportunity I could have had to attend a decent college on a shooting scholarship,” she says.

In the teen girl’s pro-gun video, she argues that a stipulation in the proposed law would make it more difficult for residents to carry guns across the state border. Many of her shooting team’s meets take place in nearby Delaware, Sarah Merkle says.

Her video has joined a crowded debate about the future of gun control laws, one that has ramped up since the December mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut. Several states have either proposed or adopted new gun control measures including a set of what became some of the nation’s strictest gun laws in New York.

Merkle argued that the proposed legislation in Maryland wouldn’t actually make anyone safer.

“Purging our society of violence and murder cannot be done by gun control legislation,” she said, adding, “You are not eliminating guns from society but eliminating our ability to protect our lives, liberty and pursuits of happiness.”

The teen girl’s pro-gun video apparently didn’t have too much of an effect on lawmakers. Maryland officials still approved the sweeping package of gun control reforms. Governor Martin O’Malley is likely to sign it soon.