Ohio Gun Owners to Urge Senator Portman to Support Common-Sense Background Checks at Press Conference Friday

83 Percent of Ohioans – and 82 Percent of Gun Owners Nationally – Support Comprehensive, Tough-On-Crime Background Checks

*** MEDIA ADVISORY***

COLUMBUS, Ohio, Aug. 29, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Ohio gun owners will gather in Columbus on Friday to call on Senator Rob Portman to support comprehensive background checks that will help keep guns out of the wrong hands. Polls have found that 83 percent of Ohioans support common-sense background checks.  Additionally, 82 percent of gun owners nationwide – including 74 percent of NRA members – support this tough-on-crime measure.            

Currently, it remains far too easy for criminals, domestic abusers, people with severe mental illnesses and other dangerous individuals – people who know they can't pass a background check – to skirt the law and obtain guns by purchasing them online or at gun shows, where background checks are not required under federal law. Bipartisan legislation sponsored by NRA A-rated Senators Joe Manchin and Pat Toomey—and supported by a majority of U.S. Senators— would have closed this dangerous loophole by extending background checks to commercial gun sales. But Senator Portman was part of a minority of senators who voted to block this sensible legislation. At the press conference, gun owners will urge Senator Portman to change his vote.

Events details are below:

About Mayors Against Illegal Guns

Since its creation in April 2006, Mayors Against Illegal Guns has grown from 15 members to more than 1,000 mayors from across the country. The coalition has more than 1.5 million grassroots supporters, making it the largest gun violence prevention advocacy organization in the country. Co-chaired by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg and Boston Mayor Thomas Menino, Mayors Against Illegal Guns has united the nation's mayors around these common goals: protecting communities by holding gun offenders accountable; demanding access to crime gun trace data that is critical to law enforcement efforts to combat gun trafficking; and working with legislators to fix weaknesses and loopholes in the law that make it far too easy for criminals and other dangerous people to get guns.  Learn more at www.MayorsAgainstIllegalGuns.org  

MEDIA CONTACTS
Jack Warner: [email protected] or 646-324-8246
Kate Downen: [email protected] or 406-224-5056

SOURCE Mayors Against Illegal Guns

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