In the wake of the Parkland school shooting, Boston Mayor Marty Walsh suggested that there needs to be a federal movement to combat gun violence.
“Every day we have a massacre in America’s streets. We have roughly 40 people killed every day in America with gun violence,” Walsh told David Axelrod on “The Axe Files,” a podcast for the University of Chicago Institute of Politics and CNN.
“There’s something wrong with our society. There’s something wrong with our system,” Walsh said, decrying what he sees as a lack of regulations and repercussions for improper gun purchasing and the undue amount of influence held by the National Rifle Association.
The Democratic mayor held up his state as an example of effective gun control, pointing to Massachusetts’ own stringent gun regulations — including its record as the first state to ban bump fire stocks — and regional conferences they’ve held around gun violence.
“The thing that bothers me is the federal government again is not involved in this space,” Walsh said.
“As the mayor of Boston, you know, I support people’s rights to bear arms. I support their right to be able to own. But what I’m asking for is some accountability here,” he said.
Walsh described his own experiences consoling people in his city who had lost loved ones to gun violence.
“They’re looking for answers and they don’t have answers. And I think that that’s we have to do something more in this country,” he said.
“As mayor now, I’ve buried too many young people,” he added.
President Donald Trump has recently expressed openness to certain measures to combat the deadly scourge of gun violence, including comprehensive background checks and raising the age for rifle purchasing.
