New York, 3 Other States Join Forces To Fight Gun Violence

NEW YORK, NY — New York, New Jersey, Connecticut and Rhode Island formed a regional coalition Thursday to stem the tide of gun violence. The four states will share data and law enforcement resources to prevent interstate gun trafficking and collaborate on research into the effects of gun violence, their governors announced.

The move comes eight days after Nikolas Cruz killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida. Forming coalition represents another step by the states to tackle gun violence amid continued inaction from Congress, the governors said.

"We’re not going to hold our breath and we’re not going to risk our children’s lives," New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo told reporters on a conference call with New Jersey Gov. Phil Murphy, Connecticut Gov. Dan Malloy and Rhode Island Gov. Gina Raimondo.

Through the agreement, the states will help each other stop potentially dangerous gun buyers from skirting state gun laws by filling in gaps in the federal background check database, the Democratic governors said.

For instance, New York will give the other three states access to its database of 77,000 people whom doctors have flagged as mentally ill and would not be able to buy a gun in the Empire State, Cuomo said. The data will also include information about active arrest warrants and orders of protection, he said.

The states' respective law enforcement agencies will collaborate more closely to intercept illegal guns that make their way to the Northeast from southern states, Murphy said. And their state universities and other research institutions will look to study of the impact of gun violence on public health, which the federal Centers for Disease Control currently cannot do, Murphy said.

The agreement will bolster each state's already strong gun-control laws, the governors said. New York's landmark 2013 SAFE Act, passed in the wake of the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, increased background check requirements and imposed stricter rules on assault weapons.

The governors praised surviviors of the Florida school shooting for taking Congress to task and chastised Republican federal lawmakers for doing nothing in the massacre's wake.

"Putting ourselves in the shoes of these kids — they want answers, they want action and they’re afraid. So it hasn’t been a surprise to me that the kids are leading," Raimondo said.

Cuomo said congressional Democrats should put forward a "real" and "sensible" gun control bill. He said proposals to raise the minimum age to buy a gun and to ban devices that turn semi-automatic guns into machine guns are half-measures that won't solve the problem.

"Those are just political crumbs ... put forward to end the political discomfort for some of the elected officials," Cuomo said.

(Lead image: New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo speaks in Albany in January. Photo by Gov. Andrew Cuomo's Office via Flickr)