SAN ANTONIO — President Joe Biden wants to stop guns from falling into dangerous hands, and hopes his newly issued executive order will increase the number of background checks conducted on purchases.
A gun shop in Converse says it was already conducting business that way. Meanwhile, advocacy groups say more change is needed.
Lone Star Handgun sees customers customers young and old.
“We also do a ladies’ class and by far that’s probably our most popular class, other than our license-to-carry class,” said Jeremy Coppola, the store's manager and a U.S. Marine Corps retiree.
Lone Star Handgun is a federal firearms license holder. Background checks can often take as little as 15 to 20 minutes or days.
“We’re required to do federal background checks on anyone that either gets a firearm transferred to them or purchases a firearm,” Coppola adds.
Biden’s executive order also directs the U.S. attorney general to hold other sellers accountable when they don’t realize they’re supposed to run a background check.
Nicole Golden, with Texas Gun Sense, says the new regulations clamp down on the bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which passed in the wake of the Uvalde shooting.
“More than 4,000 Texans are shot and killed every year,” Golden says.
There are gaps in the executive order, which also improves public awareness of extreme risk protective orders, commonly known as red-flag laws.
Texas doesn’t have such laws on its books, but lawmakers are hoping to change that.
“(There’s) dozens of gun safety bills filed, and a whole bunch of them are extreme risk protection order bills. We’ve supported those bills for many years in Texas, we have not been successful yet,” Golden adds.
Coppola believes gun stores and responsible owners will continue following the rules.
But he’s not sure what impact the order will have.
“It’s going to apply one more hurdle to make it a little bit harder for law-abiding gun owners to exercise their rights," he said. "If you’re a criminal, you’re probably not going to follow these executive orders or laws in the first place."
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