By Laura DeKoven Waxman
January 31, 2011

On the heels of the Tucson shooting, gun safety issues dominated several discussions during the Conference of Mayors Winter Meeting. Following a January 19 briefing session organized by Mayors Against Illegal Guns (MAIG), Conference of Mayors Second Vice President Philadelphia Mayor Michael A. Nutter proposed, and the Executive Committee adopted as organization policy, a resolution that registers the Conference of Mayors' strong support for legislation that would ban magazines of more than ten rounds. It would also close a loophole in the previous ban in which magazines manufactured before the law went into effect could be sold or transferred. The resolution pledges to mobilize mayors across the nation to work toward prompt passage of this legislation. It also calls for strengthening the national background check system.

The resolution is referring to the Large Capacity Ammunition Feeding Device Act that was introduced in the House by New York Representative Carolyn McCarthy as H.R. 308 on January 18 and in the Senate by New Jersey Senator Frank Lautenberg as S. 32 on January 25. Following up on the resolution, Conference of Mayors CEO and Executive Director Tom Cochran sent an alert to all mayors on January 24 asking them to contact their House and Senate members as quickly as possible and urge them to support and co'sponsor this legislation.

Commenting on the need for this legislation, Nutter said, "High capacity magazines pose a threat to public safety and have no place on the streets of U.S. cities. For ten years, these magazines were banned by federal law and we're calling for the reinstatement of this law to help ensure the safety of all Americans."

As he accepted the Conference of Mayors Distinguished Service Award January 19, Chicago Mayor Richard M. Daley decried the prevalence of guns and violence in America and called for the passage of common sense gun laws. "I hope there are common sense gun laws and that we say we have far too many guns in our society…. Mayors have always led the way in this discussion. I'm very proud of The U.S. Conference of Mayors. We have discussed this; we have come up with common sense regulations, common sense ideas. We should not be killing our own on a daily basis," Daley said.

Speaking during the January 20 luncheon, Conference of Mayors Vice President Los Angeles Mayor Antonio R. Villaraigosa commented that one could support the Second Amendment, and still challenge the idea that you need an assault weapon to hunt a deer. "We certainly don't need them on the streets of our cities," he said.

MAIG announced its plans January 24 to urge Congress to fix the background check system. In a press conference with Martin Luther King III and the families of other gun violence victims, New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg, the organization's co-chair, said that "The time has clearly come to finally fulfill the intent of the common sense gun law passed after the 1968 assassinations of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, by creating a loophole-free background check system for the sale of firearms…. Every day, 34 Americans are murdered with guns — and most of them are purchased or possessed illegally."

In a letter sent that same day to both Bloomberg and MAIG Co-Chair Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino, Cochran assured them of the Conference of Mayors strong support for strengthening the background check system. "The U.S. Conference of Mayors has had strong policy calling for strengthening the background check system and eliminating loopholes within it for many years," Cochran stated. Furthermore, he said that that policy was reinforced during the Winter Meeting through a resolution "which calls on Congress to fully fund the 2007 NICS Improvement Act; make modifications needed to ensure that all records of felons, mentally ill, and drug abusers actually are in the system; and close loopholes in the law, including ‘Gun Show Loophole,' to ensure that criminals, the mentally ill, and drug abusers do not slip through cracks in the background check system."