Since last year’s July 4 parade mass shooting in Highland Park, Illinois has moved rapidly on gun control measures.
The most controversial has been the ban on so-called assault weapons.
Immediately after Gov. JB Pritzker signed the Illinois Community Protection Act into law in January, gun rights advocates began filing lawsuits.
The Illinois State Rifle Association challenged the ban a week after the new law went into effect, joining the Second Amendment Foundation in a lawsuit.
“Governor Pritzker signed draconian legislation that crushes the rights of more than 2.4 million law-abiding firearm owners in Illinois,” ISRA Executive Director Richard Pearson said in a communicated then. “The clock is ticking as law-abiding gun owners get closer and closer to being criminals. Every day our freedom shrinks.”
Lake County Board Member Sara Knizhnik comes to the gun debate from a very different perspective.
“I have been fortunate enough to have no personal experience with gun violence, but I have worked with literally hundreds of Illinois residents whose lives have been forever affected by gun violence,” he said.
Knizhnik was an organizer for the Illinois Council Against Handgun Violence and founded the north suburban chapter of the gun control organization Moms Demand Action.
Since the mass shooting in Highland Park, Knizhnik has seen some progress in the fight against gun violence. She credits the expansion of the state’s firearms restriction order and the clear and present danger statute, commonly called red flag laws, for making it harder for dangerous people to get guns.
But Knizhnik believes there is still a lot of work to be done.
“We must pass a Safe Firearm Storage Act and fully fund community violence disruption programs in our most underserved communities,” he said. “We also need to support programs that address the root causes of gun violence, programs like the Gun Violence Prevention Initiative at the Lake County District Attorney’s Office.”
Knizhnik and Pearson joined “Chicago Tonight” for a discussion about the effectiveness of Illinois’ gun control legislation.
