On July 4th, we expect celebratory fireworks to rain down from the sky. But at the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, Illinois bullets rained down instead. The fact that this horrific mass shooting that left 7 people dead happened in a state that has some of the strictest gun laws in the U.S. shows us that current gun safety measures are not enough. Five of the Highland Park victims were over 60 when they were ripped away from their families and friends. The other two were Irina and Kevin McCarthy, a couple in their 30s who were with their 2-year-old son when they were shot and killed. That poor boy was thankfully found alive, but he will grow up never knowing his parents.
This is the reality of guns in America -- and this horrible reality will continue until our lawmakers finally take meaningful action. Sign the petition for an assault rifle ban and demand an end to the filibuster that makes it difficult to pass meaningful gun control laws.
The Illinois attack occurred just nine days after Biden signed a new bipartisan gun bill -- and in tandem with over a dozen more mass shootings across the country that same day. Since then, there have been more than 30 mass shootings in the U.S. since that gun control bill was signed -- this includes Highland Park, which actually banned assault weapons in 2013. Despite these restrictions, nearby states have much weaker gun laws, making it possible to access assault weapons. It's simple: until assault rifles are banned on a federal level, mass shootings will remain common. To do this, we must end the filibuster, which has been used to block votes on gun violence prevention legislation for decades.
From 1994 to 2004, the U.S. had a federal assault weapons ban. A Northwestern Medicine study shows that the ban likely prevented 11 mass shootings. If it had not expired, up to 30 more mass shootings could have been prevented between 2004 and 2021. The data shows us that banning assault weapons will save countless lives.
"People are dying right now. People are in pain right now. And it is not enough for elected officials," said Nina Turner, former Ohio state senator and national co-chair of the Bernie Sanders 2020 presidential campaign. "By prioritizing bipartisanship over the lives of people, these Democrats are allowing the most radical minority of Republicans to rip our democracy to shreds and stopping game-changing progress on common-sense gun reform."
Abolishing the filibuster would allow stronger gun legislation to pass. The procedural filibuster requires that at least 60 Senators must agree to end a debate and move forward with a vote, thus allowing a small group of conservative Senators to prevent any meaningful and progressive laws from ever even going to a vote. The Senate has changed the filibuster rules in the past -- now, they have a moral obligation to abolish it in order to save countless lives.
Sign the petition to ban assault rifles across the U.S. and abolish the filibuster!
