OPINION:
“Throwing shade on the Second Amendment” (Web, March 20) takes retail companies to task for raising the age limit for gun purchasing and “imposing their own rules on who can buy a gun.” It gives the example of “service members” who could “return from combat duty in Afghanistan to find [they] cannot buy a rifle to go hunting.” But is there a U.S. law requiring that retailers must sell long guns to all people under 21? There is a law restricting the sale of handguns to all people under 21.
Capitalism, the backbone of the U.S. economy, provides freedoms to participants in commerce. Unless there is a law requiring this sale of long guns to people under 21, isn’t it the right of these retailers to set this age limit?
If they are on the wrong track, their bottom lines will suffer and equilibrium will take place in the future. For now, go to a retailer that does sell to those under the age of 21. I’m sure there are gun shows and other retailers that can be found online.
Attacking the retailers for selling their wares is akin to telling them how to run their businesses. That is not the American way. That is what freedom is all about. That is what it means to risk capital in the running of a business to generate a profitable return. And that is why young service members went to Afghanistan in the first place — to help that country obtain freedom.
The alternative is “1984” or ultimately, a dictatorship.
JAMES KOUT
Bowie, Md.
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