July 04, 2024

Duckworth Joins Highland Park Community in Remembering Lives Taken Two Years Ago

 

[HIGHLAND PARK, IL] – U.S. Senator Tammy Duckworth (D-IL) today joined community members, Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering and other local officials to mark the two years since the Highland Park shooting. At today’s Remembrance Ceremony, Mayor Rotering and local faith leaders paid tribute to the seven victims whose lives were taken during the shooting at the 2022 Fourth of July parade in Highland Park. Ahead of today’s ceremony, Duckworth also met with family of lives taken and survivors of the shooting.

“While two years have passed since the horrible tragedy in Highland Park, I’m still thinking of the seven lives taken, their families, survivors and a community forever changed,” Duckworth said. “My heart aches for all those impacted, and I’m committed to helping make sure their stories live on. For the sake of those seven lives taken, and for all gun violence survivors who’ve experienced the unimaginable, we must get weapons of war off our streets. I will never stop working for commonsense gun safety legislation that saves lives and helps make massacres like what we saw two years ago relics of a heartbreaking past.”

This week, Duckworth, U.S. Senate Majority Whip Dick Durbin (D-IL) and U.S. Representative Brad Schneider (D-IL-10) announced the introduction of a resolution expressing the condolences of Congress and honoring the memory of the victims of the shooting. In the wake of the Highland Park shooting in 2022, Duckworth called for gun safety reforms on the Senate floor and delivered opening remarks to a U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee hearing focused on protecting our communities from mass shootings and finding commonsense gun safety reforms.

Duckworth has been a fierce advocate of getting weapons of war off our streets. She supported the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act, which President Biden signed into law to help crack down on straw purchasing, expand background checks for buyers under 21 years of age, take steps to close the “boyfriend loophole,” support state red flag laws and offer billions in funding for counseling, mental health, and trauma support for victims of gun violence.

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