WASHINGTON, D.C. — Kansas City Mayor Quinton Lucas is helping promote the recently passed bipartisan gun legislation.

Some lawmakers and advocates say these are the biggest changes to the nation’s gun law in decades. Still, the mayor says more needs to be done to create safer streets.

Accompanied by interim Kansas City police chief Joe Mabin, Lucas says there are steps left out of the new law that he believes could make a difference in preventing shootings that have become all too common on Kansas City’s streets.

The mayor questions the ability in Missouri to carry a gun without a permit.

He says in the 1990s, police could stop and seize firearms from those who did not carry a permit.

He believes such power could have prevented a shootout, similar to the one Sunday night in Westport, which killed one person and wounded five others.

“Somebody who lives in Missouri or Kansas today, who is watching the news and saying, ‘Wow there was an establishment last night that had three armed police officers plus armed security guards and you still have a shooting like that,'” Lucas said. “After a while it tells you, ‘Heck I’m just going to throw up my hands and do nothing,’ or maybe after a while the fact that every person walking through our streets has a gun, isn’t the solution to crime long term.”

The new federal law requires that background checks include juvenile and mental-health records of gun buyers who are under 21.

The measure also encourages states to enact red-flag laws, which allow courts to order guns to be temporarily removed from people who are deemed to be dangerous.

The federal law also imposes new criminal penalties on those who buy a gun for someone who’s not supposed to have one, and new penalties on gun trafficking.