Label
Council Member Komives
Title
Expressing the sense of the Toledo City Council that the Ohio General Assembly must enact greater safety requirements on guns to prevent the death and injury caused by the use of firearms.
Summary
WHEREAS, individuals with guns injure more than 100,000 people a year and kill more than 30,000 a year including through homicides, suicides, and accidental deaths; and whereas far more Americans have been killed with guns in the U.S. than have died in all our wars combined; and
WHEREAS, America has now suffered more than 95 shooting massacres over the past 35 years, including thirteen since 2017, including one in Kirkersville, Ohio, and the recent tragedy at the Stoneman Douglas High School in which 17 students, staff and educators were shot down; and whereas America's schools and colleges remain vulnerable without our focus on enhanced school safety; and
WHEREAS, there are minimal safety requirements on the type of weapons available for purchase by private individuals in America, including military-style assault weapons; and
WHEREAS, only federally licensed gun dealers are required by law to run background checks yet 40 percent of gun sales - six million guns a year - are sold on the secondary market through unlicensed dealers and are not subject to background checks, enabling the acquisition of guns by criminals, perpetrators of domestic violence, minors, substance abusers, and those with severe mental illnesses that are determined by a healthcare professional to be a danger to themselves or others; and
WHEREAS, persons on the U.S. government's terrorist watch list are legally able to purchase guns through unlicensed dealers on the secondary market; and
WHEREAS, our country continues to severely underfund the National Instant Criminal Background Check System and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives - resulting in an incomplete background database that hasn't expande...
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