© 2025
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

Mass. House Speaker Urged To Help Springfield With Public Safety

A group gathered for a press conference
Paul Tuthill
/
WAMC

It’s been just over a year since Massachusetts enacted tough gun legislation, and House Speaker Robert DeLeo visited Springfield Wednesday to talk about the law’s impact.

    Springfield police have taken more than 130 guns off the streets since the beginning of the year, but the city has been plagued by sporadic gun violence this summer, as has Boston ,and other Massachusetts cities. 

DeLeo said he’s persuaded the violence would be worse without the state’s gun law.

" I am not trying to pass the buck, but we have got to have the federal government do something," he said.

Springfield officials lobbied DeLeo to support bail reform legislation  to make it easier to detain repeat violent offenders, and for more state money for youth violence prevention programs.

The record-setting tenure of Springfield Mayor Domenic Sarno. The 2011 tornado and its recovery that remade the largest city in Western Massachusetts. The fallout from the deadly COVID outbreak at the Holyoke Soldiers Home. Those are just a few of the thousands and thousands of stories WAMC’s Pioneer Valley Bureau Chief Paul Tuthill has covered for WAMC in his nearly 17 years with the station.