Media Advisory: Nevada Gun Owners To Urge Senator Heller To Support Common-Sense Background Checks At Press Conference Thursday

86 Percent of Nevadans – and 82 Percent of Gun Owners Nationally– Support Comprehensive, Tough-On-Crime Background Checks

LAS VEGAS, Aug. 28, 2013 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Nevada gun owners will gather in Las Vegas on Thursday to call on Senator Dean Heller to support comprehensive background checks that will help keep guns out of the wrong hands. Polls have found that 86 percent of Nevadans 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.  For a video of Nevada gun owners discussing their support of background checks, please visit this link.           

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

Events details are below:

Las Vegas

What:  Nevada Gun Owners to Gather to Call on Senator Heller to Support Common-Sense Background Checks

Where:  Senator Heller's office, 8930 West Sunset Road, Suite 230, Las Vegas NV 89148

When:  Thursday, August 29, 3:00 PM

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