NYC Mayor Adams testifies before Congress to push for new gun restrictions to stem mass shootings: ‘It’s high noon in America’
Mayor Adams told Congress on Wednesday that it’s high time lawmakers take firm action to restrict guns and end the plague of mass shootings.
Speaking on the heels of the massacres in Buffalo, New York and Uvalde, Texas, Adams said Americans are counting on elected officials to make common-sense changes to protect their kids and communities.
“It is high noon in America,” Adams said. “It’s time for every one of us to decide where we stand on the issue of gun violence.”
“We must do it now,” he added.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams testifies during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on gun violence on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. (Jason Andrew/)
Hizzoner called it a disgrace that virtually every day brings another spasm of gun violence.
“In our country, the country I love, the clock is ticking every day toward another hour of death,” he said.
Adams spoke as part of a panel before the House Oversight Committee led by fellow New Yorker Rep. Carolyn Maloney.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams arrives to testify during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on gun violence on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. (Andrew Harnik/)
The Manhattan Democrat kicked off the hearing by demanding action to make deadly weaponry harder to obtain.
“As a society, we are failing our children and we are failing each other,” Maloney said. “This out-of-control gun violence is a uniquely American tragedy.”
The Democratic-led House of Representatives was preparing Wednesday to vote on a package of gun laws dubbed the Protect Our Kids Act.
The measures include raising the minimum age to 21 to purchase a semiautomatic rifle, tougher background checks and banning the sale of high-capacity magazines that are an indispensable tool to kill as many people as possible as quickly as possible.
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The mayor spoke of his previous career as a police officer before he ran for City Hall on a law-and-order platform.
“My greatest responsibility is protecting the people of the city of New York,” he said. “This is my calling, my duty, my life’s work.”
“I need your help,” Adams said.
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (left) shakes hands with Greg Jackson, Jr., executive director of Community Justice Action Fund (right) after they testified during a House Committee on Oversight and Reform hearing on gun violence on Capitol Hill in Washington, D.C. on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. (Andrew Harnik/)
Adams earlier met with members of the city’s congressional delegation. But two of the delegation’s prominent Democratic progressives, Reps. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and Jamaal Bowman, skipped the meeting.
The mayor was also joined by Rep. Jerrold Nadler (D-N.Y.) in a statement decrying the mass killings.
Adams and Nadler, who is chairman of the Judiciary Committee, called for immediate action to close loopholes that have made it frighteningly easy for would-be killers to obtain the weapons that are essential to carrying out their sick crimes.
Adams insisted he was not taking sides in the brutal Manhattan Democratic primary between Nadler and Maloney, noting that he joined Nadler for the statement but appeared at Maloney’s committee hearing.
“I’m not picking sides. These are issues that politics is not in the place of,” he said. “This is not Democrat, or Republican or campaign issues. These are public safety issues.”
New York City Mayor Eric Adams (right) and Rep. Jerry Nadler, D-N.Y. (left) during a meeting with the New York Congressional delegation prior to Adams testifying before the U.S. House Oversight and Reform Committee on gun violence in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, June 8, 2022. (Michael Appleton/)
The laws seemed likely to pass the House but are virtually dead on arrival in the evenly divided Senate, where pro-gun Republicans hold effective veto power.
Separate talks are taking place between Senate leaders from both parties on a much weaker package that might attract enough GOP support to overcome a certain filibuster effort by conservatives.
