One of the biggest obstacles to getting assault weapons banned in the United States is the amount of money they generate.
There were around 10 million guns manufactured in the U.S. in 2016 of which around 2 million were semiautomatic, assault-style weapons. According to the National Shooting Sports Foundation, the firearms industry's trade association, the U.S. industry's total economic impact in 2016 alone was $51 billion.
In 2016, the NRA gave over $50 million to buy support from lawmakers. When one considers the tens of millions of dollars spent on commerce and corruption, it's no wonder gun control advocates have an uphill battle.
That, of course, assumes that money can control just about anyone in the equation. However, there are a few brave souls who actually value human life over profit.
One CEO stood up and put his money were his mouth is, even though it cost his business an estimated $250 million, is Ed Stack, CEO of Dick's Sporting Goods.
Dick's Sporting Good's C.E.O. Ed Stack on permanently removing all assault-style rifles from stores- "To think about the loss and the grief that those kids and those parents had, we said, 'We need to do something, and we're taking these guns out of all of our stores permanently." pic.twitter.com/PvoG9unnqL
— Matt Keller (@MattKellerABC7) February 28, 2018
After a gunman killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, on Feb. 14, 2018, Dick's stopped selling assault-style rifles at all 729 of its namesake stores and subsidiaries across 47 states in the U.S.
RELATED: Dick's Sporting Goods Pulls Assault Rifles From Shelves And Wants Them Banned Altogether
It also announced it would not sell any firearms to people under the age of 21.
That announcement came after it had stopped selling assault-style rifles at its namesake stores in 2012 after the Sandy Hook shooting.
While announcing the ban, Dick's stepped its toes into the political debate by imploring elected officials to enact common sense gun reform by passing the following regulations:
— Ban assault-style firearms
— Raise the minimum age to purchase firearms to 21
— Ban high capacity magazines and bump stocks
— Require universal background checks that include relevant mental health information and previous interactions with the law
— Ensure a complete universal database of those banned from buying firearms
— Close the private sale and gun show loophole that waives the necessity of background checks
The decision was partly inspired by the ugly truth that Dick's sold a shotgun to the Parkland shooter three months before the massacre, although it wasn't used at the shooting.
"We did everything by the book. We did everything that the law required, and still he was able to buy a gun," Stack said. "When we looked at that, we said the systems that are in place across the board just aren't effective enough to keep us from selling a gun like that.
Currently, 125 of Dick's 729 stores no longer sell guns of any kind. Stack is looking to expand that number.
RELATED: Doctor explains why he checks dead patient's Facebook before notifying their parents
However, for Stack, taking the moral high road hasn't come without its costs.
"How much did you think you were going to lose?" CBS News' Lee Cowan asked Stack.
"A quarter of a billion dollars," Stack replied. "And how much did you actually lose?" Cowan repled.
"About a quarter of a billion! Pretty close," Stack said.
At the time of the ban, Dick's had about $5 million worth of assault-style rifles in its inventory and he decided to turn it into scrap metal.
"I said, 'You know what? If we really think these things should be off the street, we need to destroy them,'" he said.
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Will your current friends still be with you after seven years?
Professor shares how many years a friendship must last before it'll become lifelong
Think of your best friend. How long have you known them? Growing up, children make friends and say they’ll be best friends forever. That’s where “BFF” came from, for crying out loud. But is the concept of the lifelong friend real? If so, how many years of friendship will have to bloom before a friendship goes the distance? Well, a Dutch study may have the answer to that last question.
Sociologist Gerald Mollenhorst and his team in the Netherlands did extensive research on friendships and made some interesting findings in his surveys and studies. Mollenhorst found that over half of your friendships will “shed” within seven years. However, the relationships that go past the seven-year mark tend to last. This led to the prevailing theory that most friendships lasting more than seven years would endure throughout a person’s lifetime.
In Mollenhorst’s findings, lifelong friendships seem to come down to one thing: reciprocal effort. The primary reason so many friendships form and fade within seven-year cycles has much to do with a person’s ages and life stages. A lot of people lose touch with elementary and high school friends because so many leave home to attend college. Work friends change when someone gets promoted or finds a better job in a different state. Some friends get married and have children, reducing one-on-one time together, and thus a friendship fades. It’s easy to lose friends, but naturally harder to keep them when you’re no longer in proximity.
Some people on Reddit even wonder if lifelong friendships are actually real or just a romanticized thought nowadays. However, older commenters showed that lifelong friendship is still possible:
“I met my friend on the first day of kindergarten. Maybe not the very first day, but within the first week. We were texting each other stupid memes just yesterday. This year we’ll both celebrate our 58th birthdays.”
“My oldest friend and I met when she was just 5 and I was 9. Next-door neighbors. We're now both over 60 and still talk weekly and visit at least twice a year.”
“I’m 55. I’ve just spent a weekend with friends I met 24 and 32 years ago respectively. I’m also still in touch with my penpal in the States. I was 15 when we started writing to each other.”
“My friends (3 of them) go back to my college days in my 20’s that I still talk to a minimum of once a week. I'm in my early 60s now.”
“We ebb and flow. Sometimes many years will pass as we go through different things and phases. Nobody gets buttsore if we aren’t in touch all the time. In our 50s we don’t try and argue or be petty like we did before. But I love them. I don’t need a weekly lunch to know that. I could make a call right now if I needed something. Same with them.”
Maintaining a friendship for life is never guaranteed, but there are ways, psychotherapists say, that can make a friendship last. It’s not easy, but for a friendship to last, both participants need to make room for patience and place greater weight on their similarities than on the differences that may develop over time. Along with that, it’s helpful to be tolerant of large distances and gaps of time between visits, too. It’s not easy, and it requires both people involved to be equally invested to keep the friendship alive and from becoming stagnant.
As tough as it sounds, it is still possible. You may be a fortunate person who can name several friends you’ve kept for over seven years or over seventy years. But if you’re not, every new friendship you make has the same chance and potential of being lifelong.