Bloomberg's gun-control campaign recruits stars for 'Demand a Plan' video

The gun-control campaign Mayors Against Illegal Guns released a video Friday with stars from around the entertainment and sports world reiterating its demands for the nation's elected officials to put forth a cohesive strategy for regulating firearms.

The video, "Demand a Plan," shows about 50 celebrities in 82 seconds, with movie stars like Jamie Foxx, Cameron Díaz and Jon Hamm, among others, joined by Beyonce and John Legend from the music world and pro basketball players Chris Paul and Carmelo Anthony.

The campaign has taken on a higher profile since the Dec. 14 mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary in Connecticut, which, as the video emphasizes, is far from alone among tragedies of its kind. A similar video was released in the wake of the Aurora, Colorado massacre earlier this year, one of several shootings name-checked in "Demand a Plan."

New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg, who co-founded the organization, released a statement of his own Friday, shortly after the NRA sought to distance itself from any wrongdoing in the rash of armed violence in the U.S in a press conference.

"The NRA's Washington leadership has long been out of step with its members, and never has that been so apparent as this morning," Bloomberg said. "Their press conference was a shameful evasion of the crisis facing our country. Instead of offering solutions to a problem they have helped create, they offered a paranoid, dystopian vision of a more dangerous and violent America where everyone is armed and no place is safe."

The campaign calls for mandatory criminal background checks for anyone who buys a gun, for bans on assault weapons and high-capacity gun magazines and for making gun trafficking into a federal crime, along with tougher penalties against "straw purchasers," meaning anyone who purchase firearms on behalf of ineligible parties, a practice that is currently legal unless the proxy buyer has advance knowledge that the weapon will be used for committing a crime.

Watch the video, posted on YouTube Friday, below.