Read the Memorandum of Understanding Here.
Governor Hochul: “This memorandum is transformative. I believe this is going to give us and our law enforcement entities in each of our states the tools we need to be able to trace guns that are coming from other states, to understand when a crime has been committed, we want to share information with our neighboring state if someone’s on the run. Where are the guns coming from? How are they getting on our streets, and why is there such a disproportionate impact on young people, particularly in communities of color, who are becoming the victims of gun violence?“
Earlier today, New York Governor Kathy Hochul, New Jersey Governor Phil Murphy, Pennsylvania Governor Tom Wolf, and Connecticut Governor Ned Lamont signed a Memorandum of Understanding to share crime gun data in an effort to prevent gun violence and enhance public safety. The agreement allows law enforcement agencies from New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, and Connecticut to share crime gun data across state lines in order to detect, deter, and investigate gun crimes, as well as identify and apprehend straw purchasers, suspect dealers, firearms traffickers, and other criminals.
VIDEO of the Governor’s remarks is available on YouTube here and in TV quality (h.264, mp4) format here.
AUDIO of today’s remarks is available here.
A rush transcript of the Governor’s remarks is available below:
Well, thank you, Governor Murphy, for your incredible leadership on this and so many other areas where we have a common bond as the Governors of the adjoining state. So Pennsylvania, our friend Tom Wolf, as well as Ned Lamont from Connecticut. And I want to thank all of you for your willingness to collaborate. It’s not always a word used in terms of governors or people in our positions, but it’s the way we get things done for the people we are honored to represent.
And the gun crisis, the gun violence crisis, has been with us a long time. As a young staffer on Capitol Hill for Senator Moynihan, many decades ago, we worked on this issue. But what we have seen as a result of this pandemic is a spike in gun violence, and I’m sure there will be psychologists who study a long time from now, well, what’s that’s exactly attributed to, but we do know that the results are being seen in our streets and in our communities, and people deserve to have leadership, people who are going to work together to find solutions. This memorandum is transformative. I believe this is going to give us and our law enforcement entities in each of our states the tools we need to be able to trace guns that are coming from other states, to understand when a crime has been committed, we want to share information with our neighboring state if someone’s on the run. Where are the guns coming from? How are they getting on our streets, and why is there such a disproportionate impact on young people, particularly in communities of color, who are becoming the victims of gun violence?
So we all share in this common goal to do whatever we can in our power to eradicate this situation and to do everything we can to save lives in our states, and part of it comes down to just fixing something that, as you mentioned, if Congress would simply allow us to share this nationally, what a better place we would be. But in the meantime, this is where the states are the incubators. They’re the ones who are the innovators who come up with policies working collaboratively among ourselves, and if we can be a model for the rest of the nation, and again, I thank Governor Murphy for bringing us together and your leadership on this, to say that we can do so much more together.
So I’m hoping is that we can put this template in place, have our law enforcement partners, work in sync together, share the information that we get from the FBI already. It only goes to our individual states. That information is going to be useful, but I think other states should either form a joint coalition or that they should form their own regional collaboratives as well, and that’s how we’re going to get to that bottom of this crisis. But I look forward to working on this and many other issues in the spirit of collaboration that we see here today. And with that, I’d like to join my neighbor, our great Governor Tom Wolf from the State of Pennsylvania.
