In light of the fact that the shooter in yesterday’s slaughter was able to legally buy a weapon and bring it into the town despite assault rifles being banned there nine years ago, Highland Park’s Democratic Mayor Nancy Rotering called for a national ban on them on Tuesday.
The powerful rifle that Robert “Bobby” Crimo, 22, used to murder six people and injure dozens more yesterday at the Highland Park July 4th Parade was “legally obtained.”
It is still unknown exactly where he bought the firearm.
The Highland Park City Council outlawed semi-automatic weapons in the community in 2013. The initiative was led by Mayor Rotering, who was a member of that council at the time.
It failed to stop yesterday’s tragedy which she says is proof of the need for a nationwide ban on the ‘weapons of war.
‘I don’t know where it came from but I do know it was legally obtained. At some point this nation needs to have a conversation about these weekly events involving the murder of dozens of people with legally obtained guns.
‘If that’s what our laws stand for, we need to re-examine the laws.
‘Our values are askew. Yesterday we came together to celebrate independence and freedom after two years of not having a parade.
‘We were ready to come together and celebrate our nation and as a result, because of this gun culture, our nation turned its back on us,’ Rotering said during an appearance on TODAY.
‘We have to have a very strong conversation with ourselves. I don’t know how many more of these incidents need to occur, we’ve been talking about this literally for decades at this point,’ she fumed.
She rejected the idea that the problem was with the mental health of shooters and not the weapons themselves – a strongly-held view among pro-2nd amendment activists.
‘Someone clearly had a mental breakdown but I don’t want to ascribe it to mental health.
‘I want to talk about the fact that there are weapons of war on our streets that people can legally obtain and take out dozens of people.
‘Our community is never going to recover from this wound. This is an absolutely devastating blow to all of us.
‘Why do we as a nation allow this to happen with such regularity? I can’t tell you how many mayors I heard from yesterday… it was like “here we are again”. I never thought I would be one of “those mayors”, well none of us do.
‘This is unbelievable to me that this is an acceptable part of who we are as a nation.’
In 2013, the Highland Park City Council, led by Rotering, proposed the ban on semi-automatics in response to the Sandy Hook school shooting that shocked the world.
‘Sandy Hook had just happened. It was a common-sense step to reduce gun violence and to protect our children and our community,’ Rotering said in 2015.
The ban made it illegal for people to carry semiautomatic weapons that can accommodate large-capacity magazines in addition to specifically outlawing AR-15s and AK-47s.
The ban was contested by the local doctor and the Illinois Rifle Association.
The Supreme Court heard the case all the way through but eventually declined to weigh in. Therefore, the ban is still in effect today.
But Justice Clarence Thomas, who is well-known for his recent contentious decision in Roe v. Wade, wanted to make a decision regarding the assault ban in Highland Park.
In a dissenting opinion, he claimed that the court should have heard the case and noted that the vast majority of people who own and use such rifles do so for legal purposes, such as self-defense and target shooting.
President Biden just enacted a gun reform law that handles the question of who may buy firearms, but it does not deal with the types of weapons currently permitted in the US.
He has praised the bipartisan legislation, calling it a victory and the biggest reform step in 30 years.
The new rule was created in reaction to the Uvalde school shooting on May 24, in which Salvador Ramos killed 19 students and two instructors.
Within a few days after turning 18, Ramos was able to legally purchase two weapons in the AR-15 style, which he used in the assault.
Leaders in Texas blamed the attack’s aftermath on shoddy background checks rather than the accessibility of the weapons themselves.
The NRA has not released a formal statement on the shooting in Highland Park. Before the first shots were fired, it said on Twitter: ‘Happy 4th of July, America!
‘We are a country because of brave souls with guns who valued and fought for liberty and freedom.’
Hours later, after the gunman was apprehended, the same account retweeted someone defending it saying: ‘The NRA is once again the only organization in America that gets blamed for crimes their members never commit.’
In 2019, the gunman’s father – Bob Crimo Sr. – ran against Nancy Rotering to become Mayor of the town. He campaigned on a platform of improving conditions in the town for small business owners but lost to Rotering with fewer than 30 percent of the vote.
Crimo had owned a local deli.
‘We need to take a hard look at Highland Park’s many ordinances, rules, and regulations, and see if we can improve them or change them in order to stimulate new business growth within our downtown business district. I’m running for Mayor as a person for the people of our community.
‘I have no interest in using the Highland Park Mayorship as a stepping stone for higher office,’ he said at the time.
In the days after the Uvalde shooting, he ‘liked’ a tweet about protecting Americans’ 2nd Amendment rights.