A Los Angeles City Council committee agreed Monday with one of its members, who says the National Rifle Association is one of the biggest roadblocks to gun safety reform, in signing off on a motion that would require city contractors to disclose any ties they have to the organization.
Councilman Mitch O'Farrell's motion, if passed by the full council and signed by the mayor, would not ban NRA-connected contractors from doing business with the city, but would require them to disclose any contracts or sponsorships they have with the gun rights advocacy group.
The NRA did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
The City Council approved a similar ordinance last year that requires contractors or prospective contractors to disclose that they have placed bids on President Donald Trump's border wall. Although it did not ban those contractors from working with the city, the ordinance sent the message that Los Angeles would be unlikely to hire a contractor with ties to the wall.
"The roadblock to gun safety legislation across the United States is the National Rifle Association," O'Farrell told the Budget and Finance Committee. "Although gun safety legislation has been enacted by some individual states, especially here in California, the NRA's lock on Congress and the Senate is such that no gun safety legislation has been enacted at the federal level since 1994 with the assault weapons ban. Than ban expired in 2004."
O'Farrell is not on the committee, but came to the meeting and spoke to its members before they approved his motion -- which says the city of Los Angeles historically has enacted ordinances in support of gun safety -- without objection.
The motion says there have been more than 1,600 mass shootings in America since the Sandy Hook Elementary School mass shooting in 2012, citing the Gun Violence Archive, which quantifies a mass shooting as when four or more people are wounded or killed, not including the shooter.
"For the sake of transparency, the city's residents and stakeholders deserve to know how the city's public funds are being spent, and whether taxpayer funds are being spent on contractors that have contractual or sponsorship ties with the NRA," the motion states.
Following the mass shooting at Stoneman Douglas High School in Florida on Feb. 14, a number of corporations that had offered discounts to NRA members cut ties with the organization, including Delta Air Lines, United Airlines and the Hertz rental car firm.
O'Farrell's motion does not state if the city currently has any contractors with ties to the NRA.
