Politics & Government

West Hollywood Mayor Signs Letter Seeking Stronger Gun Control

Jeffrey Prang joins scores of mayors in asking Obama to "make it harder for dangerous people to own guns."

West Hollywood Mayor Jeffrey Prang signed a letter Wednesday from the U.S. Conference of Mayors calling for tighter gun control laws.

In the letter, the Conference of Mayors calls for three specific actions:

  • Enact legislation to ban assault weapons and other high-capacity magazines being prepared by Senator Dianne Feinstein and others.
  • Strengthen the national background check system and eliminate loopholes in it.
  • Strengthen the penalties for straw purchases of guns.

The letter comes less than a week after a . It goes on to say that Congress should increase funding for mental health care and establish a commission to look at violence in the country as a whole.

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"We know that preventing gun violence—whether it is a mass shooting in a school or a murder on a street corner—will take much more than strengthening our gun laws," the letter says. "We need to reverse the culture of violence in our nation so that a violent act isn’t the first response to settling a difference or compensating for a wrong."

But gun control laws shouldn't wait for other improvements to happen first, the letter says.

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Download the letter here [PDF].

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