A coalition of the nation’s mayors, including D.C.’s Adrian Fenty, urged Congress on Tuesday to eliminate a provision that prohibits them from seeing federal gun data that they said would help them remove deadly weapons from city streets.
New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, co-chair of the 225-member Mayors Against Illegal Guns, continued his campaign to have Congress lift the so-called Tiahrt Amendment, which prohibits the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms from releasing its gun-trace data to the public. The information, Bloomberg said, would help public safety officials pinpoint the dealers responsible for flooding the streets with illegal firearms.
“This week we’ll get a chance to see what the new House of Representatives is really made of,” Bloomberg said from the terrace of the Cannon House Office Building, a day after two New York City Police officers were gunned down in Brooklyn. “The Tiahrt Amendment is the most anti-cop, soft-on-crime law Congress has passed in years.”
For Bloomberg, the event was his first public visit to D.C. since changing his party affiliation from Republican to an independent, which fueled speculation of a presidential run.
Fenty, a coalition member, briefly attended the news conference, said nothing and left when it started to rain.
The media event morphed into a spectacle thanks to Bloomberg’s presence — drawing more attention to the gun issue.
The ATF rider was added to the budget bill five years ago by U.S. Rep. Todd Tiahrt, R-Kan. The House Appropriations Committee today will be asked to lift it from the fiscal 2008 budget.
Releasing trace data will infringe on citizens’ Second Amendment rights and compromise police investigations, say supporters of the provision, led by the National Rifle Association. Bloomberg’s real agenda is “gaining access to confidential law enforcement information for the purposes of bringing predatory lawsuits against firearms manufacturers and retailers,” Chris Cox, NRA’s chief lobbyist, said in a recent statement.
Amendment critics said the provision handcuffs police and shields criminals.
