Passage 3: In 1879, on the road leading into Dodge City, th…
Passage 3: In 1879, on the road leading into Dodge City, there stood a sign. “The Carrying of Fire Arms Strictly Prohibited,” it said. The gun control ordinance was the first law passed when the city was organized in 1873. Nor was Dodge unique. Many other western towns, Wichita and Tombstone among them, had similar laws. The statutes don’t seem to have been particularly controversial. Though Dodge City was, by reputation if not always in actual fact, one of the toughest and most lawless places on the frontier, cowboys had no problem walking unarmed into its brothels and saloons. Yet in 2019, many of us feel the need to take guns into Walmart. Worse, they’re allowed to do so under permissive “open carry” laws which, in most states, give people the right to bear handguns and even long guns in public. But now Walmart is fighting back. Sort of. Last week, the giant retailer announced that it was “respectfully requesting” that people not bring guns into its stores. This, on the heels of last month’s racist mass shooting — 22 people died — at a Walmart in El Paso. Other companies, including Kroger, CVS and Walgreens, quickly followed suit. The New York Times notes that still more companies — Starbucks, Target and Chipotle among them — already had such policies in place. Most used the same word Walmart did to couch their requests: “respectfully.” To say “it’s about time” is to understate. Years of living in the shadow of massacres has left us a nation on tenterhooks, 330 million people all sharing the same case of PTSD. One recalls the panicked stampede in Times Square last month when motorcycles backfired. One observes that children are being sent back to school this year with bulletproof backpacks. And one is glad businesses are willing to “respectfully request.” But they must do more. What statement best states the central claim of the above text?