Mayors Against Illegal Guns Co-Chairs Call for Senate Action On Gun Safety in Wake of Mass Shootings and as NRA Convention Kicks Off

NEW YORK – Today, the ten co-chairs of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a nonpartisan coalition of more than 1,000 current and former mayors that is part of Everytown for Gun Safety, called on the U.S. Senate to take action on gun safety in the wake of the mass shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas – a predominantly Latinx community. The shooting, which killed 19 children and two teachers, comes less than two weeks after a white supremacist targeted a grocery store in a Black neighborhood in Buffalo and shot 13 people, killing 10, as they shopped.

In calling for Senate action on gun safety, Mayors Against Illegal Guns Co-Chairs Mayor Brandon Scott (Baltimore, MD), Mayor Tim Kelly (Chattanooga, TN), Former Mayor Steve Benjamin (Columbia, SC), Mayor Quinton Lucas (Kansas City, MO), Mayor Shawyn Patterson-Howard (Mount Vernon, NY), Mayor Eric Adams (New York, NY), Former Mayor Michael Tubbs (Stockton, CA), Mayor Tishaura Jones (St. Louis, MO), Mayor Jane Castor (Tampa, FL), and Mayor Regina Romero (Tucson, AZ) issued the following statement: 

“For far too long, gun lobby backed members of the U.S. Senate have sat idly by while 110 people in this country are shot and killed, and twice that are shot and wounded, every single day – in acts of domestic violence, shootings on the streets of our cities, and in heartbreaking mass shootings in supermarkets and elementary schools. No more. The U.S. Senate has a moral obligation to take action on gun safety. Failure to do so is an abdication of their most basic responsibility: to keep us safe.”

Specifically, the co-chairs are calling on the U.S. Senate to:

• Expand background checks to all gun sales: Nobody should be allowed to purchase a gun without a background check. Period. 
  
• Pass a federal Red Flag law: Every community needs to have a Red Flag law that gives them a tool to temporarily remove guns from someone who has shown clear warning signs that they pose a danger to themselves or others.
  
• Confirm Steve Dettelbach as ATF Director: The agency that enforces our gun laws and proactively shuts off the pipeline of illegal guns has been understaffed and under resourced for 20 years. The Senate needs to give it the resources it needs and confirm Steve Dettelbach as Director so it can do its job.

• Regulate Assault Weapons: We need to take a long, hard look at how assault weapons are made, marketed and sold to keep these weapons of war off of our streets and out of the hands of violent extremists.  

• Raise the age to purchase a gun: The law already prevents anyone under 21 from buying a handgun from a gun dealer but teenagers and reckless youth have no business owning an assault weapon and we should raise the age to purchase these weapons across the country. 
  
• Repeal The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA): The gun industry has had a get out of jail free card for too long. It’s time for the gun industry to face the same kind of accountability as every other manufacturer of consumer products for its role in the gun violence crisis – and lose its special protection.