- The mayors of Hartford and Bridgeport — no strangers to the problems of illegal firearms in their cities — stood among a large group of their colleagues Monday to announce that the Mayors Against Illegal Guns has a new four-step mission.

The group's plan, hatched at this national summit in Washington: Stop gun-show sales of firearms to people without background checks. Require that gun dealers' employees be checked out, too. Close the loophole that lets dealers with revoked licenses sell off their stock. And block people on the terrorist no-fly list from buying guns.

Mayors Eddie Perez and Bill Finch both said that success on those goals could have an effect in their Connecticut cities.

Perez, one of the original members when the mayors' group started last year, insisted, "This is not anti-gun legislation." He said the four steps are "all things that add up to a good public-safety policy."

Of the half-dozen homicides so far this year in Hartford, most of them are believed to involve illegally obtained guns, Perez said.

"We're not against people having a gun," Perez said. "It just has to be a legal gun." Last year, city police pulled about 400 illegal guns off the streets. That's a typical number, he said.

Connecticut is ahead of other areas in some firearm regulations. Perez and Finch both pointed at last year's new state law requiring that lost or stolen firearms be reported immediately, making it harder for the owners of weapons connected to crimes to use the excuse that the firearm had been stolen. It can lead to a felony charge.

"We're already strongly in favor of gun control in Connecticut," Finch said.

But, he said, "This has to be more than just Connecticut."

Perez said it wouldn't be possible for individual cities such as Hartford to get much traction if its leadership sought nationwide changes.

"Cities like ours wouldn't have been able to develop the coalition," he said.

The mayor of Boston, Tom Menino, and the mayor of New York, Michael Bloomberg, share the group's leadership.

"We all have exactly the same problems," Bloomberg said. "We want to keep guns out of the hands of criminals."

Bloomberg said polling ordered by the organization showed people from both parties, whether they owned guns or not, supported the four steps to "stop the craziness."

The summit also produced another announcement: Wal-Mart, the world's largest retailer, committed to a voluntary "10-point code" placing more scrutiny and safeguards on purchases of guns at its stores.

The measures include video recording the purchases, running background checks on employees, greater identification requirements and keeping tighter control of its firearm inventory.

Contact Jesse Hamilton at jhamilton@courant.com. For more news and views from Washington, visit Hamilton's blog, On Background, at www.courant.com/background.

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