Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a nationwide wide group that includes Gainesville’s Craig Lowe, released a public service announcement Thursday pushing for stronger federal gun regulations.
Lowe is one of 30 mayors featured in the roughly 90 second piece. As a series of mayors list the sites of mass shootings, including Columbine, Virginia Tech, Tucson and Aurora, CO., Lowe names the most recent, the Connecticut city of Newtown.
The announcement includes New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and, among others, the mayors of Boston, Philadelphia, Minneapolis and San Francisco.
Mayors Against Illegal Guns is an organization pushing for more stringent federal, state and local gun regulations. The group formed in April 2006 and now has 900 member mayors in 45 states.
Following the December shooting that left 27 dead at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Mayors Against Illegal Guns is demanding that Congress put in place mandatory background checks for all sales and bans on “military-style assault weapons” and high capacity magazines.
The organization also wants to make gun trafficking a federal offense. That includes so-called “strawman” purchases, when someone legally buys a gun to sell to someone who cannot buy one legally.
The City Commission approved its federal legislative agenda at Thursday’s meeting and Lowe did not seek to add the issue of gun restrictions to the list of priorities. Lowe said at a future meeting he intends to introduce a proposed resolution in support of the restrictions Mayors Against Illegal Guns seeks at the federal level.