As mayor in this great city of Maple Plains, it is a shame to hear of the crippling assault on one of our own. Yet, what is more stomach churning and upsetting is that one of our own was injured by a by from our own gun sale. Like so many of my fellow city leaders, I am at a loss as what should be done. Although some of my peers have adjusted themselves with the halting of the gun sale, our major source of income, and others to the continuing of it, I stand in the middle, hesitant to react too swiftly and irrationally yet, concerned that no action on my part would be foolish. With the coming election, my creditability would most certainly be in question.
             We, as a city council, have called for a town meeting to decide the course of action that our constituents wish us to take. Beings that I am the creator of the ordinance that allowed the reselling of guns has no comfort to me either since it was one of these guns that crippled a businessman and former police officer. I still remember that one of the guiding factors was everyone would have to have a background check, no exceptions would be made but still one of our guns fell into the wrong hands. What must we do to prevent this from reoccurring? Can we prevent this from reoccurring.
             As a parent, I was in favor of this. So many good things would come to our community: Saturday basketball for the children to keep them off the streets and out of trouble, new weapons, firearms, and training for our police department, additional patrols in our areas with higher crime.
             If we must stop our gun sale then our community outreach programs will we gone. The police department would loss the funding vital to continuing the community outreach programs. We would fall behind in our training and ability to maintain current training. The only solution would be to raises taxes which would become too burdensome for our taxpayers, businesses, and industries. And we are just trying to beg...