Fellow Republicans, support this gun safety bill

This week, for the first time in more than two decades, the U.S. House of Representatives will hold a vote on major stand-alone gun safety legislation, this time in the form of H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019. As conservatives with a deep respect for the Second Amendment and former Republican members of Congress, we urge our fellow Republicans in the House and Senate to get behind this legislation to require background checks on all gun sales. If you watch a lot of cable news or subscribe to National Rifle Association newsletters, you would be forgiven for believing that gun safety vs. believing in the Second Amendment is an either-or proposition. The truth is, the American people know that our right to protect our families goes hand in hand with laws that help keep guns out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them. The Bipartisan Background Checks Act is not only consistent with the Second Amendment; it’s also as common sense as any piece of legislation we voted on during our combined eight years in Congress. What it would do is simple: It would require a background check for every gun sale — not just for sales by licensed dealers, as the Brady Act has required since it went into effect in 1994, but also for unlicensed sales between strangers who meet online or at gun shows. It is a common-sense way to fully carry out the spirit of that existing federal law. This bill doesn’t take away anyone’s guns, create a firearms registry or threaten the Second Amendment rights of law-abiding citizens. It simply ensures that people who would fail a background check if they attempted to buy a gun from a licensed dealer in a brick-and-mortar store can’t go to an unlicensed online seller to buy a

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