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 of our 2025 National High School Essay Contest are:
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
(Student’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)
* 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.