New York City Mayor Eric Adams said Wednesday in testimony to the US House Committee on Oversight and Reform, led by New York’s US Representative Carolyn Maloney, that “it is high noon in America.”
Adams told the lawmakers that it’s time to decide whether it is “more important to protect the profits of gun manufacturers or the lives of our children.
“It is high noon in America. It’s time for every one of us to decide where we stand on the issue of gun violence. We must do it now.”
Adams warned that Americans are facing a crisis that is killing more people in the US “than war.” Gun violence, he said, is the “number one cause of death for our young people.”
The mayor said that NYPD police officers have taken more than 3,000 illegal guns off the streets this year alone, “but the guns just keep coming.”
He warned, as the co-chair of Everytown’s nonpartisan coalition on Mayors Against Illegal Guns, that the crisis “transcends party lines and affects both rural and urban communities.”
Adams urged the lawmakers to “take the handcuffs off the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives and let them do their jobs.” To do that, he said, Congress must confirm President Joe Biden’s nominee as soon as possible.
“Commonsense gun reform must become the law of the land,” he added, urging the House to pass the gun violence prevention package, H.R. 7010 – the Protecting Our Kids Act – for consideration in the Senate.
The measure would raise the minimum age to 21 for purchasing a semiautomatic rifle, add tougher background checks and ban the sale of high-capacity magazines that enable murderers to kill as many people as possible, as rapidly as possible.
“I also urge the Senate to pass H.R. 8, the Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2021, and H.R. 1446, the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2021. These are bipartisan gun safety bills that will make our cities and our people safer,” he said.
Adams said he supports Biden’s call to Congress to “regulate or ban assault weapons in this country,” and urged Congress to direct federal aid to localities and states that would support law enforcement, violence prevention and access to “high-quality health care, childcare, education and housing.”
The mayor emphasized the need to change the trajectory of America’s youth, saying that as mayor of New York, “This is my calling, my duty and my life’s work. I did it as a police officer in a uniform and wearing a badge. And I do it now as the elected leader of our largest American city.”
But, as he pointed out, it has to get done in the Congress.
And then in the Senate.
