Kansas City mayor, police department chief set to visit DC to celebrate gun safety bill

Two Kansas City leaders are set to be in Washington D.C. Monday for an event celebrating the passage of the bipartisan gun safety bill.

Mayor Quinton Lucas and Kansas City Police Department interim Chief Joe Mabin will be in the nation’s capital to celebrate the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, following an earlier visit this summer where Lucas and Mabin met with President Joe Biden and senior Department of Justice leaders about building safer communities.

“We all agree that guns should not be in the hands of people who have or want to act dangerously with them, especially those that use them to intentionally hurt other people,” Mabin said in a statement. “There should be laws in place that ensure the police are able to protect the community from those that want to do harm with guns.”

The bipartisan measure, passed last month and signed into law by Biden, marks the most significant attempt by federal lawmakers to address the issue in nearly 30 years.

Lucas, who is the co-chair of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, said the signing shows that it is possible to come up with common sense gun violence solutions. And while it doesn’t go far enough, Lucas said, he does hope it “emboldens us to act.”

He has heard from people with different backgrounds, of different demographics, that the continual mass shootings just don’t make sense.

“You’re basically taking a risk if you go into an entertainment district nowadays, not just in Kansas City, but anywhere in America,” Lucas told The Star. “I think this is where we can make a difference.

“I’m not taking lawful firearms from anybody. That’s not my issue. I ain’t going out (of the) state of Missouri to do that,” Lucas said. “What I am doing is saying, you know what, ‘maybe we can stop the slaughter on the streets at Kansas City.”’

The city recorded six homicides this week and the majority were a result of shootings.