After a former student used an assault-style rifle to gun down 17 people – mostly students – at a Florida high school and Evanston saw its first shooting death earlier this month, Evanston Mayor Steve Hagerty called a community forum to discuss what he called “a problem that isn’t going away on its own.”
Nearly 100 Evanston residents attended the impromptu meeting, which was held at the Morton Civic Center on Thursday, to hash out strategies for stemming gun violence in town and around the country.
Hagerty scheduled the meeting just three days in advance, after three high-profile shootings had made him feel “a little hopeless and a little sad,” he said.
In the span of one week, Evanston Township High School graduate Yakez Semark was gunned down Feb. 8 in west Evanston, Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer was killed Feb. 13 while responding to a robbery in the Loop, and on Feb. 14, a man opened fire on dozens of students and educators at a high school in Parkland, Fla.
“It feels right to get together and talk about actionable things we can do,” Hagerty said. “I know it was short notice, but there is momentum to create more sensible gun laws right now, and I wanted to create a way to help capture that.”
While many in the public have called for stricter gun laws in the wake of previous and these most recent incidents, President Donald Trump put forth an idea to arm teachers, including ones who are military veterans.
“They’d go for special training and they would be there and you would no longer be a gun-free zone,” Trump said during a White House meeting that included survivors of the shooting at Marjory Stoneman Doulas High School in Parkland, Florida. “You’d have a lot of people that would be armed, that’d be ready.”
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Hagerty invited a panel of doctors, clergy and gun control activists to describe some of the political tools citizens can harness to lobby for tighter restrictions on gun sales.
Denyse Stoneback, who founded the group People for a Safer Society in the aftermath of the Sandy Hook mass shooting in 2012, asked attendees to support a bill being considered in Springfield that would require gun dealers to apply for state licenses.
“In Illinois, doctors and nurses, real estate professionals, manicurists, even dog groomers all need a state license to operate professionally, but gun dealers do not,” Stoneback said. “Oversight of gun dealers is critical, because gun dealers are the link between manufacturers and the public.”
Dr. Marjorie Fujara, a pediatrician at Stroger Hospital specializing in child abuse and trauma, said gun control advocates could use the same four-pronged strategy that activists used to fell the tobacco industry: public awareness campaigns, scientific research, local government regulations and prolific lawsuits.
The city may consider following more than 20 other Illinois towns in banning the sale or use of assault weapons, but only after putting the idea through intense legal scrutiny, Hagerty said after the meeting.
“Our legal counsel looks at that and tries to determine, if we were to do something like this, what’s the potential legal cost to the city?” Hagerty said. “Because if you do try to do that, the NRA is going to sue you.”
After the National Rifle Association sued nearby Highland Park over its assault weapons ban in 2013, a federal court ruled in the town’s favor and the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear the case, laying a legal precedent for municipalities to ban the high-powered guns.
Thursday’s forum also heard testimony from multiple people who had lost family and friends to gun violence. They included former 5th Ward aldermanic candidate Carolyn Murray, whose 19-year-old son Justin was shot dead in 2012 while walking home from a party in Evanston.
Murray organized a gun buyback event in the aftermath of her son’s killing. She said the program was successful, drawing dozens of guns from “a very diverse group” of people.
But, she added, it would take more than just gun control to stop shootings in Evanston.
“Poverty breeds criminal behavior,” she said. “If these kids don’t have employment…if they don’t have money to go to the doctor, if they don’t have adequate food, then we’re all doing a disservice.”
Former Evanston resident Steve Young, whose son Andrew was gunned down in 1996, said the Florida students whose school was targeted earlier this month have thrown new momentum into the movement for gun safety.
“After Columbine and all the other shootings we did not get one piece of legislation passed, but…I always had a hunch sooner or later we would get to the tipping point,” Young said. “I always thought that the tipping point would come with the next generation. Their time is here. Their time is now.”
Alex Nitkin is a freelancer.