In yet another public push to get the Republican-held Senate to take action to curb gun violence, the CEOs of 145 U.S. companies signed a letter asking Senate leaders to stop dawdling and pass two of the most popular reforms.
Doing nothing about America’s gun violence crisis is simply unacceptable and it is time to stand with the American public on gun safety.
Gun violence in America is not inevitable; it’s preventable. There are steps Congress can, and must, take to prevent and reduce gun violence. We need our lawmakers to support common- sense gun laws that could prevent tragedies like these.
That’s why we urge the Senate to stand with the American public and take action on gun safety by passing a bill to require background checks on all gun sales and a strong Red Flag law that would allow courts to issue life-saving extreme risk protection orders.
Signatories include the heads of Airbnb, Bain Capital, Gap, Levi Strauss, Lyft, Reddit, Uber, and Yelp. Pressure from the business community continues to grow; aside from any attempt at basic human decency, no company wants to be host to the next of America's unending mass shootings. (Walmart, it should be noted, did not sign on.) Recent mass shootings have spurred several large retailers to rethink their own open carry policies—a reasonable response to customer alarm at seeing people armed with murder weapons stalking the aisles of their stores.
Increased business pressure to do something about guns is going to present Republican do-nothings with a conundrum. The National Rifle Association has long dictated America's lax, militia-and-extremist-friendly gun laws, but the NRA has been imploding in a cloud of financial scandals and public disgust. If the party's very topmost power brokers, megacorporations, want gun laws to change, it will be harder for election-year Republican supplicants to ignore those calls.