It could be the loss of foreign tourism that will be the motivating factor for people in this country to reconsider their position on the regulation of hand guns.

This nation has had a long history of problems caused by the wrong people obtaining and using hand guns for unlawful purposes. There is no state, city or town which has not had problems with hand gun control and experienced needless deaths by people easily obtaining handguns. But now there is a new twist on the gun control saga.

Since last fall there have been nine foreign tourists killed in Florida. And it is not only Florida that has been in the news for the death of a foreign visitor. This past year the trial for the killing of a Japanese student, who was shot when he did not “halt” as he was looking for a Halloween party, caused the Japanese government to put out pamphlets to aid vacationers going to the U.S. to avoid being shot.

Understandably, people from across the ocean are getting scared and people in the tourism business are getting nervous that foreign vacationers will chose to go somewhere else.

More and more the U.S. is looking like a trigger happy country to outside eyes.

The old National Rifle Association slogan goes, “guns don’t kill people, people do.” However, guns make it a whole lot easier. People don’t walk into fast food restaurants carrying a knife and kill 20 people.

Gun enthusiasts claim that criminals will get and use guns even if gun control laws are enacted. However, those laws would certainly make it more difficult for individuals to obtain guns and it would be another weapon law enforcement could use against criminals.

Far too often a person with a prior criminal record or history of mental illness has been able to purchase guns legally—the end result being a tragic murder.

Its time for this country to develop a national policy on gun control. While some states have stringent gun control laws, other states are very loose on the matter.

Gun control is certainly not the only answer, but the use and distribution of guns must be as tightly monitored as possible and the policy should be consistent from state to state.