Baltimore Mayor Brandon Scott (D) took aim at states like Florida and Virginia for not having stricter gun control laws because he says their laws result in cases such as the mass shooting that took place in his city over the weekend.
The mass shooting at a block party just after midnight resulted in almost 30 people being shot with two others killed. The New York Times reports most of the victims were teenagers and there was more than one shooter. At this time, it is not known where the firearms that were used originated from.
"Mayor Scott, you said this year alone Baltimore pd confiscated 1,300 illegal weapons. Do you have a sense of where guns are coming from, the sort of illegal supply of guns are coming from into the city?" CNN's Audie Cornish asked.
"These guns come into Maryland – I want to be very clear about this – because Maryland has gun laws that actually have an impact. We have a ghost gun ban, which is why you see those numbers coming down. But these weapons come from Virginia. They come from Texas. They come from Florida. They come from Alabama. They come from everywhere in this country," Scott replied.
"Here we are dozens of years later, decades later at this point and we’re still dealing with mass shootings because of the inaction to deal with this issue on a national level. This can no longer be an issue that falls to the feet of local police, local elected officials or state governments," he continued.
The Baltimore City Fraternal Order of Police revealed the patrol district was short staffed on the night of the shooting, with the Baltimore Police Department being short almost 1,000 police officers.
At the time that this incident occurred, the Southern
— Baltimore City FOP (@FOP3) July 2, 2023
District patrol shift was working short-handed as usual. @BaltimorePolice used to have 20+ cops on every patrol shift. Now there are sometimes half that number. BPD is 700 cops short and more are leaving weekly thanks to the…