MAYORS AGAINST ILLEGAL GUNS PRAISES DEFEAT OF MEASURE THAT THREATENED POLICE WITH PRISON FOR TRACKING ILLEGAL GUNS

Joint Statement from Coalition Co-Chairs New York City Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas M. Menino

"This week Congress defeated a more insidious version of the Tiahrt Amendment, the appropriations rider that restricts the access of cities and states to aggregate crime gun trace data. This data is critically important to the efforts of local police to identify regional illegal gun trafficking patterns, and yet the defeated version of the Tiahrt Amendment threatened our police officers with prison terms for using the data for exactly that purpose. That would have been a true travesty of justice.

"While we remain staunchly opposed to the anti-police Tiahrt Amendment provisions that remain, we are pleased that Congress said 'No' to making the Tiahrt restrictions worse. In addition, we applaud Congress for heeding our call to eliminate the Tiahrt Amendment's geographic restriction on data requests, which blocked police officers from getting critical information on out-of-state sources of illegal guns. While too many restrictions on trace data remain in place, it is nevertheless encouraging that following the national campaign our bi-partisan coalition of mayors, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives has begun releasing trace data that it had previously refused to release. Our coalition will continue fighting against restrictions on crime gun trace data, and continue fighting for other pieces of common sense legislation that will help our police officers keep guns out of the hands of criminals."