Dick Durbin resumes gun control calls after Highland Park parade shooting
The second-ranking Senate Democrat said Tuesday that “so much more” needs to be done in Congress to address gun violence after six people were killed and more than two dozen others injured in a mass shooting during a Fourth of July parade in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park.
Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.) called for more restrictions on purchasing assault weapons 10 days after President Biden signed bipartisan gun legislation into law.
“Let me tell you, we all know, at least some of us do, it’s not enough,” Durbin told CNN at the scene of the parade shooting.
“You know, [that] they still think that a shooter can buy a weapon that is really designed for the military to kill people in volume, and has no sport or hunting purpose, and turn that weapon loose on an innocent crowd in Highland Park tells us there’s much more to be done,” he added.
“What the hell does America need with this type of weapon that was designed for the military?” Durbin asked. “You don’t need it to go hunting or sport shooting. It has no earthly purpose.”
Monday evening, authorities arrested Robert Crimo III, whom they described as a “person of interest” in the parade shooting. Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering told NBC’s “Today” show that a firearm recovered from the scene was “legally obtained.”
Crimo has not yet been charged in connection with the bloodshed.
Sen. Tammy Duckworth (D-Ill.) — an Iraq war veteran — also called Monday for a ban on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines, telling reporters that “the last time I heard a weapon with that capacity firing that rapidly on a Fourth of July was [in] Iraq.”
“We can, and we should, and we will do better,” Duckworth added.
Illinois Democratic Gov. J.B. Pritzker also criticized America’s gun policy Monday evening, saying “mass shootings have become our weekly, yes, weekly American tradition.”
“There are going to be people who say today is not the day, that now is not the time to talk about guns. I’m telling you there is no better day and no better time than right here and right now,” Pritzker said, adding: “Our founders carried muskets, not assault weapons. And I don’t think a single one of them would have said that you have a constitutional right to an assault weapon with a high-capacity magazine, or that that is more important than the right of the people who attended this parade today to live.”
Later Monday, Biden himself led a moment of silence for the victims and acknowledged that “we got a lot more work to do. We got to get this under control. We got to get this under control.”
