Highland Park: Ban military-style assault weapons and high-cap magazines now!

A Fourth of July neighborhood parade. Another young white man with a military-style semi-automatic assault rifle, who, this time, killed six people and injured 26 more, many of them children. Our scarred hearts are again aching for the victims, their families, and the Highland Park community.

There’s no good reason for civilians to own high-capacity magazines and weapons designed for war, especially civilian young men who would barely be considered adults.

In the United States, military-style semi-automatic assault weapons are used in the majority of mass shootings, and the majority of mass shooters obtain their deadly weapons legally due to our lax laws. Meanwhile, our overall epidemic of gun violence, of which high-profile mass shootings are only a small fraction, continues to rise. In 2020, the last year with complete data, gun deaths exceeded 45,000, representing a 14% increase from the year before, a 25% increase from five years earlier, and a 43% increase from a decade prior.

Tell Congress we need comprehensive gun policy reform now, including a ban on military-style semi-automatic assault weapons and high capacity magazines, and raising the age of gun purchases to 25!