Oakland’s Vice-Mayor Rebecca Kaplan has asked her colleagues on the City Council to join her in uplifting the voices of Oakland youth leaders and the community to join with her to call on Congress to take immediate action to impose common-sense gun control laws. The Rules and Legislation Committee voted to approve the scheduling of Kaplan’s item for the July 5, 2022, City Council Meeting.

Kaplan’s resolution would declare the City of Oakland’s support of House Resolution 7910 (Nadler), the “Protecting Our Kids Act,” and calls upon the California Congressional Delegation to endorse the bill and advocate for its passage in Congress.

Kaplan said. “The City of Oakland has enacted some of the strongest firearms safety laws in California and has a compelling interest in protecting its residents from gun violence. However, Oakland’s strong gun violence prevention laws are being undermined by weak national and neighbor state gun laws, illegal gun trafficking, and ghost guns – firearms constructed with component parts that can be obtained anonymously and without a background check. When these firearms, ghost guns, are recovered at crime scenes, they cannot be traced due to the lack of a serial number. According to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).”

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Kaplan said her research has shown that “ghost guns” account for 30% of guns recovered in California. Although these guns function and cause harm like traditional guns, their manufacturers and retailers are largely unregulated.

The ‘‘Protecting Our Kids Act’’ is a comprehensive federal bill that contains numerous measures focused on addressing gun violence, gun safety, responsible gun ownership, regulation of certain firearms and components, gun trafficking, and public safety. H.R. 7910 would employ a variety of strategies to effectively reduce gun violence across the country by:

• Prohibiting the sale or transfer of certain semiautomatic firearms to people under 21 years of age;
• Prohibition on straw purchases of firearms;
• Prohibition on gun trafficking;
• Establishing a federal statutory framework to regulate ghost guns;
• Establishing a framework to regulate the storage of firearms on residential premises at the federal, state, and tribal levels;
• Subjecting bump stocks to regulation under federal firearms laws;
• Generally, prohibiting the import, sale, manufacture, transfer, and possession of large capacity ammunition feeding devices; and
• Requiring the Department of Justice to report on the demographic data of persons who are determined to be ineligible to purchase a firearm based on a background check performed by the national instant criminal background check system.

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