Berkeley Mayor Signs Letter Seeking Stronger Gun Control

Berkeley Mayor Tom Bates signed a letter to President Obama Wednesday as part of a group, Mayors Against Illegal Guns, calling for tighter gun control laws and other steps -- notably appointing an official to fill a top enforcement post that has been vacant for six years.

The letter Bates signed noted that "the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms & Explosives (ATF), the federal agency responsible for enforcing our gun laws, has gone without a confirmed director for more than six years."

Bates' group sent out its note on the same day that the U.S. Conference of Mayors wrote to the President and Congress with a similar agenda that called 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; and 
• 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.

"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.

Download the letter here [PDF].