Kansas City Mayor Lucas, VP Harris to talk gun violence after city breaks homicide record

Mayor Quinton Lucas will participate in a conversation about gun violence featuring Vice President Kamala Harris on Thursday, following a record number of homicides in Kansas City.

Lucas is in Washington for the annual U.S. Conference of Mayors and is the chairman of the conference’s Criminal and Social Justice Committee. He hosted a similar panel last year, without the vice president, where mayors talked about different approaches to gun violence, particularly in strengthening community ties to prevent shootings before they happen.

The vice president’s participation on the panel this year comes as Harris has been traveling the country speaking about gun violence as she and President Joe Biden hope to win a second term. Last week Harris traveled to North Carolina for a roundtable conversation about gun violence. This week, she traveled to South Carolina and gave a speech to the NAACP, where she criticized Congress for its inability to pass significant gun safety legislation.

“Every person in our nation has a right to live safe and to live free from the horror of gun violence,” Harris said. “And yet, today, these so-called leaders stand by and refuse to pass reasonable gun safety laws to help protect our children and places of worship.”

The 185 killings in Kansas City in 2023 were a record, even as killings dropped in many major cities across the country, like New York, Los Angeles and Chicago. Local officials have struggled to come up with solutions in the face of a lack of action from the federal government and lax state gun laws. While killings were up in 2023, the number of people shot fell by 19% from the previous record year for killings, 2020.

While Lucas offered his support for a rule by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives that would expand the definition of which gun sellers come under its jurisdiction, the rule has faced opposition from conservatives like Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey, a Republican.

After last year’s Conference of Mayors panel, Lucas said he wanted the federal government to provide money to help create more programs like Aim4Peace in Kansas City.

“Money that is, importantly, related not just to more enforcement,” Lucas said. “Every now and then they’re very good at saying ‘all right, we’re gonna give you a grant, you can hire 18 more cops.’ That’s wonderful. The problem in Kansas City right now actually isn’t money to hire cops.”