A long list of celebrities joined Mayor Bloomberg’s efforts to pressure Washington to pass gun control legislation that could prevent tragedies on the scale of the Sandy Hook Elementary School massacre.
Beyonce, Jon Hamm, Julia Louis-Dreyfus, Reese Witherspoon and Will Ferrell are among the celebrities who recorded a public service announcement sponsored by the group Mayors Against Illegal Guns.
“Our efforts cannot bring back the 20 innocent children murdered in Newtown, CT — or the 33 people murdered with guns every day in America,” the campaign reads. “But we can prevent future tragedies by passing common sense legislation.”
The coalition of celebrities is demanding that Washington require a criminal background check for every gun sold in America, in addition to a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines and tighter federal restrictions on gun trafficking.
These are the same changes demanded by Mayors Against Illegal Guns, which now includes some 800 mayors across the country.
Last week, the group wrote a letter to President Obama urging immediate attention to the gun control issue, saying “too many of us have sat with mothers and fathers of children killed with guns.
“Together, we urge you to put forward an agenda that is rooted in common sense and that will make it harder for dangerous people to possess guns, and easier for police and prosecutors to crack down on them.”
The renewed calls for gun control came days after a gunman stormed Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killing 26 people, 20 of them children.
As the nation grieved, Obama announced a panel that would recommend solutions to curbing gun violence in the country.
Gun control legislation has long faced fierce congressional resistance, tabled under the powerful lobby of groups like the National Rifle Association. But since the tragedy in Newtown, there have been signs on Capitol Hill that Congress is more willing to act.
