Steve Neavling
Mayor Mike Duggan.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan joined the call for more gun control measures after the massacres in Ohio and Texas over the weekend.
"I think the country is getting fed up with hearing about thoughts and prayers and they expect Washington to act," Duggan said Tuesday during a press conference. "I would have thought Sandy Hook would have been more than enough to get action."
Since the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that claimed 26 lives in December 2012, federal lawmakers have failed to enact gun control measures.
In February, the U.S. House of Representatives passed two bills to strengthen background checks, but the legislation has stalled in the U.S. Senate. On Tuesday, Duggan co-signed a U.S. Conference of Mayors letter that encourages the Senate to "take action" on the bipartisan bills.
"The tragic events in El Paso and Dayton this weekend are just the latest reminders that our nation can no longer wait for our federal government to take the actions necessary to prevent people who should not have access to firearms from being able to purchase them," the letter states.
In late July, FBI Director Christopher Wray told a Senate committee that white supremacy is fueling an increase in domestic terrorism cases this fiscal year. On Saturday, a 21-year-old man who wrote a manifesto about his hatred for immigrants opened fire in a Walmart in El Paso, killing 22 people and injuring 26 others.
The manifesto was posted on 8chan, a hate-filled forum where other mass shooters have posted racist rants before going on a rampage.
The site has gone offline after Cloudflare, an online infrastructure company, revoked its service for 8chan.
Duggan applauded Cloudflare's decision to revoke the service.
"It was just a vile source of white nationalist hate, and why it was ever allowed to fester I have no idea," Duggan said. "There's no place in this country for those kinds of ideas."
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