Fifteen Members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns Gather in New York City for Major Summit on Gun Violence Prevention and Gun Industry Accountability, Release Data on Manufacturers of Crime Guns

Mayors in Attendance Include Mayors of New York, Tampa, Buffalo, Baltimore, and More; Summit Hosted in Partnership with African-American Mayors Association

Summit at Gracie Mansion to Bring City Leaders Together to Share Strategies on Combating Gun Violence in Their Communities, Focus on Gun Industry Accountability; Will Conclude with Press Conference at 1PM ET – Livestream Available HERE

NEW YORK – Today, ahead of a groundbreaking mayoral summit on gun violence prevention and holding the gun industry accountable, members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns released new data on the manufacturers of guns used in crimes in their cities and called on their fellow mayors across the country to do the same. The summit is hosted by Mayors Against Illegal Guns Co-Chair New York Mayor Eric Adams, in partnership with the African-American Mayors Association.

Fifteen members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns will join together at Gracie Mansion in New York City to share strategies for combating gun violence in their communities, collaborate on initiatives to hold the gun industry accountable and learn from each other. In 2006, then-New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and then-Boston Mayor Thomas Menino founded Mayors Against Illegal Guns as a coalition of 15 mayors. The coalition has since grown to a bipartisan group of more than 2,000 current and former mayors from the smallest towns to the biggest cities in nearly every state. 

“The small coalition of mayors that we launched at Gracie Mansion 16 years ago grew into a national movement that now has millions of supporters and recently helped pass the first major gun safety legislation in a generation,” said Mike Bloomberg, founding chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and 108th mayor of New York City. “As gun violence continues to devastate communities nationwide, today’s summit will help mayors work together to tackle this public health crisis, hold the gun industry to account, and save lives.”

“In order to solve the crisis of gun violence, we must work together and learn from each other – or else we are destined to repeat the same mistakes over and over,” said New York City Mayor Eric Adams. “As a co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns and board member of the African American Mayors Association, I am proud to host this convening of Mayors from around the nation. We are coming together in solidarity and strength, but also to strategize. Together, we will use data to understand the flow of illegal guns, crack down on gun manufacturers who are turning pain into profit, and fight this gun violence crisis that impacts our cities.”

“As gun production has skyrocketed across the United States, mayors of our biggest cities and smallest towns are being forced to contend with the extraordinary levels of violence that occurs when guns are too easily accessible,” said Little Rock, Arkansas Mayor Frank Scott, Jr., president of AAMA. “This data will help pull back an informational blackout curtain that has obscured our leaders and community members from seeing how often guns are recovered from crime scenes, even when no shots are fired. Mayors and law enforcement officials will now be able to take data-driven steps to hold gun dealers and manufacturers accountable and to keep these deadly weapons out of the wrong hands.”

“Mayors are on the front lines of the gun violence epidemic, and they know that to solve this crisis we can’t just focus on criminals — we also need to look upstream, and crack down on the suppliers of crime guns,” said John Feinblatt, president of Everytown for Gun Safety. “For far too long, gun manufacturers have been able to operate in the shadows and evade accountability for their role in the gun violence crisis, all while raking in hundreds of millions of dollars. Those days are coming to a close, and no group has done more to hasten their end than America’s mayors.”

Twelve cities published data today on the manufacturers of crime guns in their cities. The top manufacturer of recovered crime guns was Glock in 9 of the 12 reporting cities. On average, over 1.5x more Glocks were recovered than the second leading manufacturer in each of those 9 cities. Five gun manufacturers accounted for over half of the recovered crime guns: Glock (16.6%), Taurus (12.4%), Smith & Wesson (11.8%), Ruger (6.5%), and Polymer80 (3.8%). Collectively across this sample of 12 cities, these five manufacturers accounted for nearly 10,000 recovered crime guns in 2021.

Additionally, with former U.S. Attorney Steve Dettelbach now sworn in as the first Senate-confirmed director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) in nearly a decade, the mayors called on ATF to take key steps towards fulfilling its vitally important oversight role. Those measures include: 

• Giving cities the data and analysis needed to fully understand the flow of illegal guns and develop targeted interventions, and clarifying that the Tiahrt Amendment does not prevent cities from publicly releasing analysis of this important data; 
• Strongly implementing the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act (BSCA) and aggressively enforcing the new ghost gun rule; 
• Cracking down on rogue gun dealers by requiring high-risk dealers to implement anti-trafficking standards; issuing a new Demand Letter to those high-risk dealers requiring them to share more information with ATF, and dramatically increasing gun dealer inspections to shut down the gun dealers who are violating the law; 
• Investigating the secondary commercial marketplaces that are the source of guns for gun traffickers, including online marketplaces and gun shows, and implementing a new regulation defining who is “engaged in the business” of selling firearms (a provision in BSCA) to clearly define the unlicensed sellers who are unlawfully selling firearms without a background check.

All of the mayors attending today’s summit are members of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, and nearly all are either Co-Chairs of Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG) and/or Trustees of the African American Association (AAMA), including New York Mayor Eric Adams (MAIG Co-Chair, AAMA Trustee); Augusta, Georgia Mayor Hardie Davis (AAMA Trustee); Buffalo, New York Mayor Byron W. Brown (AAMA Treasurer); Baltimore, Maryland Mayor Brandon Scott (MAIG Co-Chair, AAMA Trustee); Former Columbia, South Carolina Mayor Steve Benjamin (MAIG Co-Chair); Kansas City, Missouri Mayor Quinton Lucas (MAIG Co-Chair); Little Rock, Arkansas Mayor Frank Scott, Jr. (AAMA President); Miramar, Florida Mayor Wayne Messam (AAMA Trustee); Montgomery, Alabama Mayor Steven Reed (AAMA 2nd Vice President); Mount Vernon, New York Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard (MAIG Co-Chair, AAMA 1st Vice President); Newark, New Jersey Mayor Ras Baraka; St. Louis, Missouri Mayor Tishaura Jones (MAIG Co-Chair); and Tampa, Florida Mayor Jane Castor (MAIG Co-Chair). Chicago, Illinois Mayor Lori Lightfoot (AAMA Trustee) and Chattanooga, Tennessee Mayor Tim Kelly (MAIG Co-Chair) will also join remotely. Several of these mayors, including the mayors of New York, Columbia, Kansas City, and Baltimore, have already taken significant steps towards holding certain members of the gun industry accountable through litigation for their contributions to our gun violence epidemic.