Weary of gun violence in their cities, U.S. mayors are calling on Congress to abandon partisanship and do something to stem the death toll.
Leaders of the non-partisan U.S. Conference of Mayors, meeting in Indianapolis, said Friday that Congress is irresponsible for letting politics stall action on measures to address gun deaths.
“As mayors, we can’t understand gridlock because it’s impermissible,” said Baltimore Mayor Stephanie Rawlings-Blake, president of the conference, at the start of its annual meeting in Indiana.
“There is absolutely no way I can tell someone because of a political difference I will not be picking up their trash today,” she said. “But that is the norm in Congress.”
The comments by Rawlings-Blake, a Democrat, at a press conference during the four-day meeting of mayors drew applause from members of both major parties. The mayors’ group has endorsed measures to limit access to guns, including expanded background checks for gun buyers and steps that would make it harder for suspected terrorists to buy firearms.
Attention to the issue has grown during the past two weeks for two reasons — the June 12 mass-shooting at an Orlando nightclub that killed 49 people, and the partisan duel over several gun-control proposals in Washington early this week that again stalled.
“The level of frustration is about their willingness to grandstand on this issue, which makes it all the more shameful,” said Rawlings-Blake.
Missing from the opening day of the mayors’ assembly was Buddy Dyer, of Orlando, who had been scheduled to lead a Saturday session on innovative partnerships between cities and universities.
As of Friday, he was still back home, attending funerals of victims of the nightclub shooting and dealing with fallout from the tragedy. He was rescheduled to speak later in the conference about how cities can prepare for, and respond to, what mayors fear will be the next mass shooting.
New Orleans Mayor Mitch Landrieu, a Democrat, said Dyer’s situation illustrates why he and his colleagues are elevating this issue. Landrieu said the number of gun deaths in the United States, about 85 per day, is forcing his colleagues to confront gun control as a matter of public safety.
“The difference between what mayors experience and what they talk about in Congress is that these men and women have to go to those funerals,” he said of his colleagues. “They have to minister to those families. They have to pick up the pieces and deal with severe consequences of somebody on either side of a gun. We have to find a way to make the streets safer.”
Mayors, especially those in big cities, said they feel like their communities suffer a disproportionate burden.
The advocacy group Mayors Against Illegal Guns, also represented at the meeting, said the country’s 25 largest cities account for one-tenth of the U.S. population but more than 20 percent of gun-related murders.
“Mayors are the ones who get the late-night calls when a police officer is shot or a child is killed,” said Paul John, a spokesman for the group.
Orlando’s mass-shooting has also raised questions of national security combating terrorism.
Among the measures that failed in the U.S. Senate this week was a bill to bar from purchasing firearms people listed on the federal government’s “no-fly” list.
Debate didn’t even occur in the House of Representatives. Dozens of Democrats held a 25-hour protest, literally sitting on the floor of the House, in hopes of forcing the issue. But they failed to move Republicans to call for a vote.
Some mayors said they fear any congressional response to the Orlando mass shooting will focus on incidents with large numbers of deaths, involving high-capacity assault weapons, but fail to address the more common problem in their communities – fatalities that occur when individuals, or a small number of people, are shot.
Mayors have called on Congress to do more to support cities’ efforts at prevention, including boosting money for cities to put officers on the streets and into crime-stricken neighborhoods.
“You have situations that happen in our cities every day, individuals who die,” said Gary, Ind., Mayor Karen Wilson-Freeman, a former Indiana attorney general. “If you take the body count, it’s just as massive.”