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CHICAGO (AP) — In a state with among the nation’s hardest gun laws and a metropolis that bans semi-automatic weapons, Dana Gordon nonetheless feared a mass taking pictures might occur right here.
Gordon, a Highland Park resident and an anti-gun violence activist, knew the acquainted questions from victims of mass shootings throughout the nation — how might such violence come to their faculty, their grocery store or movie show, their metropolis.
The latest act of mass violence to hit the U.S. got here Monday within the northern Chicago suburb, when police mentioned a gunman climbed to the highest of a enterprise alongside Highland Park’s Independence Day parade route and opened hearth. Seven people died and greater than 30 folks had been wounded.
The violence has centered consideration on Highland Park’s 2013 ban on semi-automatic weapons and large-capacity magazines.
Illinois officers have long contended that authorized and unlawful weapons are simply bought in surrounding states, hampering even the hardest native legal guidelines’ effectiveness. Authorities mentioned Tuesday that the suspected gunman, a 21-year-old resident of close by Highwood, legally bought the rifle used within the attack within the Chicagoland space however didn’t say precisely the place he purchased it.
They additionally haven’t specified the kind of weapon used, solely describing it as excessive powered and “similar to an AR-15.”
Highland Park’s clampdown survived a authorized problem from a neighborhood pediatrician and the Illinois State Rifle Association that ended on the U.S. Supreme Court’s doorstep in 2015 when justices declined to hear the case.
Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering responded to the win, on the time arguing: “Banning assault weapons and large capacity magazines is a common sense step to reducing gun violence and protecting our children, our law enforcement and our communities from potential mass violence and grief.”
Two conservative justices — Justice Clarence Thomas, joined by Justice Antonin Scalia — mentioned they’d have heard the case and struck Highland Park’s limits.
“The overwhelming majority of residents who personal and use such rifles achieve this for lawful functions, together with self-defense and goal taking pictures,” Thomas wrote.
For Gordon and different activists in Highland Park, Monday’s violent attack was a push to proceed working towards nationwide restrictions on such weapons and ammo.
Highland Park’s native and federal elected officers again gun restrictions, exhibiting it by their presence at anti-gun violence rallies and their votes. Police had been additionally stationed all alongside the parade route. But that didn’t cease the killings on Monday, Gordon mentioned.
“People have to realize, there’s nothing that makes any community immune,” she mentioned. “The only thing that’s going to help any of us is if we vote out legislators who refuse to do anything about guns.”
Gordon helped arrange an anti-gun violence arts occasion on the town final month following the mass shootings at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and a school in Uvalde, Texas. Weeks later, she was fielding telephone calls from associates who fled their metropolis’s vacation parade in terror.
Gordon mentioned for the reason that taking pictures she’s acquired dozens of emails from associates and neighbors, expressing their shock that such violence might hit their dwelling. She mentioned it provides her hope that influential voices could make a change — tempered by her perception that nationwide change is the one hope of stopping future mass shootings.
“You can’t protect people all the time,” she mentioned. “This is a gun issue.”
The Buffalo and Uvalde killings did immediate Congress to go the most sweeping gun violence bill in a decade. The package deal toughens background checks for the youngest gun consumers, retains firearms from extra home violence offenders and helps states put in place crimson flag legal guidelines that make it simpler for authorities to take weapons from folks adjudged to be harmful.
But it was signed into legislation simply days after the Supreme Court’s ruling struck down a New York law that restricted peoples’ means to hold hid weapons. And it did not embody extra sweeping proposals long backed by activists together with an assault-style weapons ban and background checks.
“I know there’s much more work to do, and I’m never going to give up, but this is a monumental day,” President Joe Biden mentioned after signing the invoice on June 25.
Copyright 2022 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This materials might not be revealed, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed with out permission.
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