Spurred by Highland Park, other mass shootings, marchers press Congress for assault weapons ban

WASHINGTON — A group pushing for an assault weapons ban, founded after the Highland Park July 4th parade massacre, brought activists here for the fourth time since the slaughter— plenty of angry moms pushing Congress on Monday to prevent civilians from buying military-style firearms.

“We hope to make sure that our voices are heard,” said Ivy Domont, 38, from Glencoe, the mother of two sons, ages 8 and 5 and a daughter, who is 3. She is a volunteer with the group March Fourth.

Her family was at the Highland Park parade when a gunman wielding a Smith & Wesson M&P15 killed seven people and wounded more than 48 others on the Central Avenue parade route.

Domont said her family ran from Central Avenue near the railroad tracks to hide behind a dumpster on St. Johns Avenue, across from a Chase Bank.

“Much of this work falls on survivors and victims, and it’s time for Americans to step up and realize that this is an American issue that faces all of us and all of our children,” Domont said.

At present, there are not the 60 votes needed in the Senate to pass an assault weapons ban, not really news except that once again, more mass shootings — the latest earlier this month in Louisville and Nashville — don’t seem to change anything.

This is the long game, except this is not a game, but a crusade, for many, to get Congress to once again ban assault-style weapons and while they are at it, high-capacity magazines.

Since the Highland Park July 4 parade massacre, there have been a string of mass shootings in the U.S. The shooters in the deadliest killings all used an assault weapon with magazines loaded with bullets.

Five people were killed at the Kentucky bank, and six people died at the Nashville elementary school.

Just before the Highland Park slaughter — in May 2022 — a shooter at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killed 21, days after 10 people were gunned down in a grocery store in Buffalo, New York.

Those mass slayings spurred a critical number of Senate Republicans to get on a compromise bill — the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, a gun measure containing provisions to make schools safer, flag mental health problems of potential gun purchasers and increase the federal penalty for straw purchasers.

It was the first gun bill in some 30 years to become a law.

It passed the Senate 65-33 on June 23, 2022, with the House advancing it the next day, on a 234-193 roll call. President Joe Biden signed it on June 25, 2022.

It never would have passed if it included an assault weapons ban. The nation once had such a ban, for 10 years, but it expired in 2004.

The bleak prognosis does not mean giving up.

Most Democrats in Congress support the ban. What’s needed is backing from Republicans who see this as a school safety or public health issue — and not some attack on the Second Amendment, which it is not.

At least 1,000 people — from some 25 states — were at the Monday march.

Meg Callahan, 69, attended with two of her daughters, Carly Bristol, 35, from Lakeview and Chelsea Huson, 33, a Ravenswood resident. Though Callahan lives in the Gold Coast now, she raised her three children in Highland Park.

Callahan said she came to the march because “I wanted to lend my voice to say enough is enough. I have five grandchildren. I worry about them. I worry about my children, and I feel like I want to empower myself to help make change.”

Bristol, the mother of a son, three-and-a-half and a daughter, 11 months, said being a mother means “I worry for their safety, I worry for my family’s safety all the time. … We need a change.”

Huson, the mother of a son, who is two-and-a-half, said “becoming a mom just changed my worldview. It’s just so upsetting. You wake up almost every day now, there’s a new mass shooting ... this isn’t normal.

“And I think you can easily become defeated by it all. But it’s important that we stand up for what everyone knows is right.”

Earlier this month, there was a lockdown at Highland Park High School after reports that a student with a gun was at the school. Five students were taken into custody.

Said March Fourth co-founder Kitty Brandtner, speaking to the group at the end of the march, “The assault weapons ban won’t even end all mass shootings. But it will give our students a fighting chance at surviving a school day. It will help teachers focus on teaching, not hiding.”