New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio has joined the gun control advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns and pledged to “force this issue on the national stage” as advocates try to keep the issue alive.
The newly installed mayor follows in the footsteps of his predecessor Michael Bloomberg, who co-founded the group in 2006 and has tried to keep gun control at the forefront of the national dialogue since the December 2012 school shootings in Newtown, Conn.
“We are taking every step within our own power to protect our own people, and we need our leaders in Washington and other states across the country to do the same,” Mr. de Blasio said. “Mayor Bloomberg took on this fight when few others would, and today we are safer for it. He built a national movement for commonsense gun control — one I am proud to join. We are going to force this issue on the national stage to protect New Yorkers from the illegal guns flooding into our city.”
After the shooting deaths of 20 children and six adults at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo helped shepherd some of the strictest gun control laws in the country through the state legislature.
Last month, a federal judge upheld most of the law, known as the SAFE Act, including a provision banning military-style semiautomatic rifles and high-capacity magazines.
U.S. District Judge William M. Skretny, however, called the law’s limit on bullets to seven per magazine “tenuous, strained and unsupported.”
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• David Sherfinski can be reached at dsherfinski@washingtontimes.com.
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