Senator Kirsten Gillibrand met with community leaders in Western New York for a roundtable discussion on gun violence.
The senator is trying to re-gain support for her federal gun trafficking legislation, which she originally introduced in 2015.
The legislation, titled Hadiya Pendleton and Nyasia Pryear-Gard Gun Trafficking and Crime Prevention Act, aims to establish federal penalties for people who sell firearms to known or believed criminals. Someone convicted of violating that law could face up to twenty years in prison.
"These bad gun dealers, these traffickers, they are trying to bring weapons directly into our communities to sell to criminals. They are criminal enterprises they should be prosecuted and they should be held accountable,” Senator Gillibrand said.
It is already illegal in New York to sell firearms to a convicted felon, but Erie County Executive Mark Poloncarz says this legislation will help target people who buy guns legally out of state, with the intent of selling them illegally here in New York.
"Almost all of the gun violence perpetrated against an individual homicide is the result of an illegal gun," Poloncarz told reporters after the roundtable meeting.
In 2015, there were forty homicides in Buffalo. Thirty-four of them were the result of gun violence.
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