Mayor Tom Roach announced today that he will join 60 other mayors from across the country as they descend on Washington, D.C. to advocate for common-sense gun laws.
Roach is a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a national bipartisan coalition of more than 800 mayors with nearly one million grassroots supporters.
“It is past time for action,” said Roach. “Every day, 33 Americans are killed with guns. I applaud Governor Cuomo and our representatives in the State Senate and Assembly for moving forward with new common sense gun regulations here in New York. We now need action at the federal level. I plan to use this opportunity to do all I can to advocate for common sense proposals for reducing gun crime.”
In the wake of the horrific Newtown elementary school shooting, Mayors Against Illegal Guns sent a letter to the White House and all members of the U.S. Congress with three concreteproposals to prevent gun violence in the United States.
These include:
- Requiring background checks for all U.S. gun sales, including the millions of “private” sales conducted over the internet, at guns shows and in other locales.
- Enacting common-sense restrictions on the purchase and transfer of military style weapons and high capacity magazines.
- Making gun trafficking a federal crime and establishing enhanced penalties for kingpin gun traffickers.
One key bill, the Fix Gun Checks Act (H.R. 137), has already been re-introduced in Congress, and several more are scheduled for introduction in the coming weeks.
Roach will ask his representatives in Congress to become original sponsors of H.R. 137 (or the Senate companion), which requires background checks for all sales and also improves the reporting of relevant mental health records into the nation’s gun background check database.
This article was contributed by Mayor Thomas Roach's office.
