As President Obama said last night in Newtown, Connecticut, “We must change.”
There is no one thing we can do as a nation to prevent massacres like the one the other day and stop the daily loss of life across this country from gun fire.
However that doesn’t mean we don’t make some reasonable changes that will make our children safer…and small business should be in the lead calling for this rational reform.
Every gun retail store follows the law and responsibly conducts background checks to prevent criminals, suspected terrorists and persons with documented mental problems from purchasing weapons.
But while our brick and mortar stores take steps to protect the public, out of town gun dealers swoop into our local communities, rent some space, sell guns to anyone with cash without being required to do background checks and then leave. This is dangerous. This is unfair to our locally-owned small businesses. This must change.
The business community in general and retail gun shops in particular should be leading the charge to make background checks a requirement in all weapon sales. There is no excuse for this Jekyll and Hyde regulatory approach to keeping guns out of the hands of dangerous people.
This change won’t prevent all the senseless killing but there is no question than some lives will be saved.
We can make this change. We must change.