Media Advisory: New Hampshire Gun Owners to Urge Senator Ayotte to Support Common-Sense Background Checks at Press Conference Thursday

89 Percent of Granite Staters– and 82 Percent of Gun Owners Nationally– Support Comprehensive, Tough-On-Crime Background Checks

PORTSMOUTH, N.H., Aug. 28, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- New Hampshire gun owners will gather in Portsmouth on Thursday to call on Senator Kelly Ayotte to support comprehensive background checks that will help keep guns out of the wrong hands. Polls have found that 89 percent of Granite Staters support common-sense background checks.  Additionally, 82 percent of gun owners nationwide – including 74 percent of NRA members – support this tough-on-crime measure.  

In an effort to push for common-sense background checks legislation that will help save lives, Mayors Against Illegal Guns has been working with gun owners across the country who support sensible measures to deliver a message to Congress.           

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 Ayotte was part of a minority of senators who voted to block this sensible legislation.  

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: jwarner@maig.org or 646-324-8246
Kate Downen: kdownen@maig.org or 406-224-5056

SOURCE Mayors Against Illegal Guns