Mayors Demand Gun Crackdown

Every day in America, 34 lives are ended by gunfire. That statistic came to life at City Hall on Monday, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg had assembled the families of 34 such victims of gunfire.
Mayors Demand Gun Crackdown
LEGACY OF NONVIOLENCE: Martin Luther King III stood with the families of 34 victims of gun violence and with Mayor Bloomberg (L) to call for a solution to the problem of gun violence in the wake of the shooting Tuscon, Ariz. (Phoebe Zheng/The Epoch Times)
Tara MacIsaac
1/24/2011
Updated:
10/1/2015

<a><img src="https://www.theepochtimes.com/assets/uploads/2015/09/CityHall-6579.jpg" alt="LEGACY OF NONVIOLENCE: Martin Luther King III stood with the families of 34 victims of gun violence and with Mayor Bloomberg (L) to call for a solution to the problem of gun violence in the wake of the shooting Tuscon, Ariz.  (Phoebe Zheng/The Epoch Times)" title="LEGACY OF NONVIOLENCE: Martin Luther King III stood with the families of 34 victims of gun violence and with Mayor Bloomberg (L) to call for a solution to the problem of gun violence in the wake of the shooting Tuscon, Ariz.  (Phoebe Zheng/The Epoch Times)" width="320" class="size-medium wp-image-1809273"/></a>
LEGACY OF NONVIOLENCE: Martin Luther King III stood with the families of 34 victims of gun violence and with Mayor Bloomberg (L) to call for a solution to the problem of gun violence in the wake of the shooting Tuscon, Ariz.  (Phoebe Zheng/The Epoch Times)
NEW YORK—Every day in America, 34 lives are ended by gunfire. That statistic came to life at City Hall on Monday, where Mayor Michael Bloomberg had assembled the families of 34 such victims of gunfire—including family members of those who died in the Columbine High School shooting of 1999, the Virginia Tech massacre of 2007, and the Tuscon, Ariz., shooting earlier this months.

Martin Luther King III, who was only 10 years old when his father was assassinated in 1968, was also among the ranks of those left behind.

“Dr. King spoke of the ‘fierce urgency of now.’ You see the fierce urgency of now in these faces,” said Mayor Bloomberg, gesturing to the 34 families that filled the City Hall rotunda staircase behind him.

“You see the fierce urgency of now everywhere, except in Washington,” he concluded.

The mayor outlined his demands on the federal government for gun law reform and enforcement. Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, head a bipartisan coalition of 550 mayors formed in 2006. The Mayors Against Illegal Guns calls for a crackdown on gun violence following the murder of six people in Tuscon earlier this month by gunman Jared Loughner.

Aside from legislation, King pointed out it is our culture of violence that must be changed.

“We must create a culture of nonviolence,” he said. The majority of cartoons, movies, and video games display violence, said King.

“Until we change what we consume—not censorship, but self-censorship—then we’re not going to address this issue,” declared the son of the civil rights hero who maintained a strong stance of nonviolence throughout his entire 39 years.

A LONG HISTORY OF INEFFECTIVE MEASURES


High-profile tragedies have spurred federal legislation in the past. After Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson enacted the first federal laws to limit access to guns. In theory, felons, drug abusers, and the mentally ill were to be denied ownership of firearms.

It wasn’t until 1993, however, that a system was created to conduct instant background checks: the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The Columbine High School shooters, who killed 13 people in 1999, were still able to acquire their weapons at a gun show without a background check. Collectors or people who only occasionally sell guns are still not required to do checks; Bloomberg is calling for the closing of the “gun show loophole.”

In 2007, Seung Hui Cho gunned down 32 people at Virginia Tech. Records reporting his mental problems were not in the system. Though NICS was in place, no pressure was placed on states or federal agencies to submit their records. After this tragedy, the NICS Improvement Amendments Act was passed to provide $375 million in funding to states that would facilitate this process.

Only 5 percent of the authorized $375 million was actually doled out. This minimal contribution still had an effect, noted Bloomberg. From 2006 to today, the number of people in the NICS’s Mental Defective File has grown from 300,000 to 1.1 million. Only 2,000 people, however, are listed as drug abusers. States that don’t submit their records are liable to lose only $15 million in federal funding as a penalty—a figure way too low to incite action said Bloomberg, who pointed out that 10 states have still not submitted any records and 18 states have submitted less than 100 records.

“And if you include missing felony convictions, domestic violence reports, and drug abuse histories, we know that there are millions of records missing from this database,” said the mayor. “They [Congress] pass a bill, but then don’t fund it so that you can’t enforce it. Or, they pass a bill that has glaring exceptions so that they can say to both sides, ‘you see I did something,’ or ‘you see I made it so that nothing is going to happen.’”

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is resistant to even the most minimal restrictions, declared Bloomberg. He says the association has avoided all dialogue with the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition.

“This is not about the Second Amendment, this is not about the right to bear arms and hunt and to have target practice as a sport; this is about plain, common-sense enforcement of laws that are already on the books,” said Bloomberg.

 

Next: A LONG HISTORY OF INEFFECTIVE MEASURES 

A LONG HISTORY OF INEFFECTIVE MEASURES


High-profile tragedies have spurred federal legislation in the past. After Martin Luther King Jr. and Sen. Robert F. Kennedy were assassinated in 1968, President Lyndon B. Johnson enacted the first federal laws to limit access to guns. In theory, felons, drug abusers, and the mentally ill were to be denied ownership of firearms.

It wasn’t until 1993, however, that a system was created to conduct instant background checks: the National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS). The Columbine High School shooters, who killed 13 people in 1999, were still able to acquire their weapons at a gun show without a background check. Collectors or people who only occasionally sell guns are still not required to do checks; Bloomberg is calling for the closing of the “gun show loophole.”

In 2007, Seung Hui Cho gunned down 32 people at Virginia Tech. Records reporting his mental problems were not in the system. Though NICS was in place, no pressure was placed on states or federal agencies to submit their records. After this tragedy, the NICS Improvement Amendments Act was passed to provide $375 million in funding to states that would facilitate this process.

Only 5 percent of the authorized $375 million was actually doled out. This minimal contribution still had an effect, noted Bloomberg. From 2006 to today, the number of people in the NICS’s Mental Defective File has grown from 300,000 to 1.1 million. Only 2,000 people, however, are listed as drug abusers. States that don’t submit their records are liable to lose only $15 million in federal funding as a penalty—a figure way too low to incite action said Bloomberg, who pointed out that 10 states have still not submitted any records and 18 states have submitted less than 100 records.

“And if you include missing felony convictions, domestic violence reports, and drug abuse histories, we know that there are millions of records missing from this database,” said the mayor. “They [Congress] pass a bill, but then don’t fund it so that you can’t enforce it. Or, they pass a bill that has glaring exceptions so that they can say to both sides, ‘you see I did something,’ or ‘you see I made it so that nothing is going to happen.’”

The National Rifle Association (NRA) is resistant to even the most minimal restrictions, declared Bloomberg. He says the association has avoided all dialogue with the Mayors Against Illegal Guns coalition.

“This is not about the Second Amendment, this is not about the right to bear arms and hunt and to have target practice as a sport; this is about plain, common-sense enforcement of laws that are already on the books,” said Bloomberg.

COALITION OF MAYORS DEMAND ENFORCEMENT


Jared Loughner, who killed 6 people and wounded 13 others in Tucson, earlier this month should have been unable to buy a gun. He was turned away from the Army for failing a drug test. His record was not, however, in the database.

The coalition of mayors is calling for the names of all felons, drug abusers, and the mentally ill to be put in the system. The goals they set forth are 75 percent of records nationwide to be submitted in two years, and 90 percent in six years. They say a greater penalty, reaching hundreds of millions of federal grant dollars rather than the current $15 million would help make this a reality.

Federal agencies have also been notably lax in submitting records, as is evident in the case of Loughner. The mayors say the head of federal agencies, such as the Army and FBI, should be required to report personally to the Department of Justice how many records their agencies have submitted to the database.

To close the “gun show loophole,” they propose a requirement that background checks must be performed before all gun sales. Anyone selling a gun would have to get a licensed gun dealer to perform the check for a fee that would be capped at $15. Alternatively, a seller could request a check from a law enforcement agency or they could inspect a certificate issued to the purchaser within the last five years.

Several Arizona leaders declared their support of the mayors’ coalition proposals.

“Our response to the recent shootings in Arizona should include an honest assessment of our gun laws,” said Bruce Babbitt, former governor of Arizona and United States secretary of the Interior in a press release. “At the very least, we should be able to agree to closing gaps in the background check system so that all relevant information is submitted and each buyer can be properly checked. It’s the responsible thing to do, and that’s why I support the mayors’ efforts.”