North Shore Towns Rally To End Gun Violence In Wake Of Mass Shootings

HIGHLAND PARK, IL — Residents of communities on Chicago's North Shore are planning rallies and marches against gun violence this month after recent mass shootings in New York, Texas and Oklahoma renewed calls for new laws aimed at increased firearm safety.

Friday marks National Gun Violence Awareness Day, which is followed by Wear Orange weekend. The Wear Orange movement began in response to the fatal shooting of 15-year-old Hadiya Pendleton, who was killed in January 2013 on Chicago's South Side, days after performing at President Barack Obama's second inaugural ceremony.

March For Our Lives, a group founded in the days after the February 2018 shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida, has called for a nationwide mobilization the following weekend. As of Friday, there were more than a half-dozen events planned in the Chicago area.

Here's what's planned on the North Shore in the coming days:

2 p.m., Saturday, June 4 — Rally For Gun Safety — at Jackman Park, Glenview

Attendees were encouraged to wear orange to the event, which is being co-sponsored by local high school students, Moms Demand Action and Indivisible Glenview. Speakers are expected to include two Glenview Democrats, State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz and Cook County Commissioner Scott Britton.

Co-organizers from Glenbrook South High School said the rally will commemorate recent victims of gun violence and demand action on comprehensive gun legislation, telling the Glenview Journal, "We have made immense progress here in Illinois and we must keep fighting."

According to Everytown for Gun Safety, the rate of gun deaths in Illinois increased by 64 percent between 2011 and 2020, compared to a 33 percent nationwide spike, and the rate of gun homicides increased by 99 percent, compared to 70 percent nationally.

9:30 a.m., Sunday, June 5 — Wear Orange 5K — at Indian Hill Park, Winnetka

A five-kilometer walk or run on the Green Bay Trail and a speaker event at Indian Hill Park is being planned to mark Wear Orange weekend in Winnetka. The event is being organized by Moms Demand Action, New Trier Students Demand Action and NU [Northwestern University] Students Demand Action, which are subsidiaries of Everytown for Gun Safety.

Speakers are set to include Phil Andrew, an FBI agent and survivor of a 1988 Winnetka spree shooting, and a representative of the nonprofit Guitars Over Guns, among others, according to The Record North Shore. Organizers requested those planning to attend RSVP ahead of the event.

2:30 p.m., Saturday, June 11 — March For Our Lives Highland Park — at Sunset Woods Park, Highland Park

More than four years after the group March For Our Lives held its first nationwide call for youth-led action to push for stricter gun laws, the youth-led movement is mobilizing again to demand an end to gun violence.

The event is scheduled to begin at Sunset Woods Park, 1801 Sunset Woods Road, Highland Park, and last for about two hours. Organizers said educators, students, parents, activists and gun violence survivors will speak at the march. More information about its route, scheduled speakers or other details is expected ahead of the event.

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March for Our Lives organizers’ immediate goal is to pressure elected officials to “step up and pass universal background checks” in the U.S. Senate. The House approved a bipartisan background check bill in 2019, but it has since languished in the Senate.

“No more time. It’s time Democrats, Republicans, gun owners and non-gun owners come together and stop focusing on what we can’t agree on and start focusing on what we can even if small,” activist David Hogg said on Twitter. Hogg was 17 in 2018 when 14 of his fellow students and three staff members at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School were killed by an 18-year-old gunman with an assault-style weapon.

“We’re doing another march on June 11 sign up here and help us make this time different,” he continued, alluding to previous times when gun law reforms failed to materialize from national outrage over a mass shooting.

In a prime-time address Thursday, President Joe Biden outlined a far more ambitious and politically difficult proposal that includes expanded background checks. He also called for the restoration of a ban on assault-style weapons and high-capacity magazines, one he helped pass as a senator in 1994 and that Congress allowed to sunset in 2004.

Failing that, Congress should at least find a way to keep those military-style weapons out of the hands of those with mental health issues, or raise the minimum age to buy them from 18 to 21, Biden said.

Related: ‘How Much More Carnage?’ Biden Asks In Appeal For Tougher Gun Laws

“How much more carnage are we willing to accept?” Biden said. “Don’t tell me raising the age won’t make a difference.”

He called on Congress to end "outrageous" protections for gun manufacturers, which severely limit their liability over how their firearms are used, comparing it to the tobacco industry, which has faced repeated litigation over its products' role in causing cancer and other diseases.

"Imagine if the tobacco industry had been immune from being sued, where we'd be today," Biden said.

If Congress doesn’t act, voters should show their outrage and turn gun control into a bellwether issue in November’s midterm elections, Biden said.

A secondary goal for March for Our Lives organizers is to push young voters to the polls in the November midterm elections, a strategy that worked in the 2018 midterms. Its 2018 march, held just over a month after the Parkland massacre when anti-gun fervor was high, fueled a 47 percent increase in young voter turnout from the 2014 midterms.

Read more: ‘You Would All Be Dead’: Kid Tells Adults How To Avoid Shooter (Video)

It was the highest youth vote turnout ever, increasing in every state, according to a Tufts University analysis. In a first, Everytown for Gun Safety, a gun-reform lobbying group backed by billionaire Michael Bloomberg, outspent the National Rifle Association in federal elections, according to The Trace, a news organization that investigates gun violence.

More than two dozen NRA-backed candidates lost their House seats, and the new Democratic majority included at least 17 newly elected representatives who favor stricter gun laws, according to CNBC.

March for Our Lives said voters made clear in 2018 “the status quo was no longer acceptable” by kicking a record number of NRA-backed candidates out of federal and state policymaking offices.

The Uvalde school shooting was the 27th of 2022, according to Education Week, an independent news organization that covers K-12 education and has been tracking school shootings since 2018. In that time, 88 people have been killed and 229 others have been injured in 119 school shootings.

Gun violence overall has spiked to the point that it’s a public health crisis, according to the federal Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, which earlier this year reported a near-record-high number of gun-related deaths in the United States in 2020.

An analysis of that data shows firearms were the leading cause of death among children for the first time in 2020.