An Open Letter from the Nation’s Mayors to the United States Congress Urging Immediate Action on Gun Safety Legislation

Dear Members of the U.S. House of Representatives and the U.S. Senate: Again and again and again, Americans are stunned by senseless acts of violence involving guns. The March 27 shooting that took the lives of three nine-year-old children and three adults in a Nashville elementary school was horrific but not isolated. It was the third school shooting in seven days, following ones in Arlington (TX) and Denver. And there have been hundreds of mass shootings that occurred over the last year, including those In Louisville, at Michigan State, and in Half Moon Bay, Monterey Park, Uvalde, Highland Park, Buffalo, and many other ciBes. Too many Bmes, mayors have expressed shock at a mass shooting. Much more frequently, many of us must cope with the gun violence that occurs on the streets of our cities. For more than 50 years the U.S. Conference of Mayors has been calling for sensible gun laws to protect the public. In December nearly 70 mayors from across the country whose cities had experienced a mass shooting in 2022 sent a letter to Senate Leaders urging the Senate to pass bipartisan gun safety legislation that had already passed the House: S.736, the Assault Weapons Ban of 2022, and S.529, the Background Check Expansion Act.