"Promising to “rebuild the heart of America’s cities,” former Gov. Martin O’Malley used an appearance at a meeting of the nation’s mayors on Sunday to call for a federal ban on assault weapons and stricter regulations on gun purchases.
O’Malley, who is seeking the Democratic nomination for president, told the annual meeting of the U.S. Conference of Mayors that the massacre at a black church in South Carolina last week demanded action from Washington.
“I heard some elected officials say this week, ‘laws can’t change this,’” O’Malley told the group in San Francisco.
“Actually, they can,” he said. “How many senseless acts of violence do we have to endure as a people before we stand up to the congressional lobbyists of the NRA?”
The former Baltimore mayor also joined the chorus of elected officials who have called on officials in South Carolina to remove the Confederate flag from the grounds of the state house in Columbia. The battle flag flew above the capitol from 1962, at the height of the Civil Rights Movement, until 2000, when it was removed to its current spot on the adjacent grounds.
“If the families of Charleston can forgive, can let go of their anger, is it really too much to ask the state government officials of South Carolina to retire the Confederate flag to a museum?” he said."An obvious question: if former Governor O’Malley actually has the answers to “rebuild the heart of America’s cities,” why didn’t he get that done when he was Mayor of Baltimore, why didn’t he get that done as Governor of Maryland?
The Neighborhood Scout website notes that Baltimore has 438 crimes per square mile, while the state of Maryland as a whole has 64; the nationwide median is 37.9. Forbes ranks Baltimore as the seventh most dangerous city in America.