With his graduation date getting closer, Drew Duffy — along with many other members of his fellow Glenbrook South 2023 Senior Class — is frustrated with the occurrences of mass shootings that have occurred in his lifetime.
“We are a group of students who have grown up in a country that has done nothing to prevent mass shootings,” Duffy said. “We are sick of our legislators on a national level doing nothing.”
Duffy joined with fellow Glenbrook South seniors the morning of Jan. 15 at the Glenview Community Church as one of 14 groups supporting gun safety in an event co-sponsored by the church’s Faith and Action Team and the Glenview/Glencoe chapter of the League of Women Voters.
“Gun violence is something that impacts every ZIP code, every faith, every race and every socioeconomic background in Illinois,” State Rep. Jennifer Gong-Gershowitz said. “This is a task we are in together.”
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Representatives from each group described their individual efforts — from a Cook County Sheriff’s Office canine officer showcasing a gun-sniffing dog and community groups highlighting educational initiatives, to Glenview Police Sergeant Joel Detloff handing out free gun locks in a collaboration with Project Childsafe, a project established by the National Shooting Sports Foundation.
“Today, I am here to talk about safe storage and keeping firearms out of the people that don’t know how to use them,” Detloff said. “I hope some people learn things. That is the whole purpose of these fairs — to spread knowledge.”
He also said that he hopes that anyone who came to the event not knowing about safe gun storage will leave with that knowledge and implement it.
During the presentations, there were many references to the mass shooting at last year’s July 4 parade in Highland Park.
Detloff said he has conducted many active shooter drills since then, more than he had in the past.
“It changed people’s knowledge base,” he said. “They wanted to be able to say they knew what they had to do instead of just freezing and saying ‘I don’t know what to do.’ “
Betsy Martin, one of the event organizers, said the Highland Park shooting along with other gun violence was one of the reasons to hold the fair as she hopes attendees will become engaged in advocating for gun safety.
She said changing existing gun laws will not be easy, but it is possible.
“You have to take baby steps and keep working on different things and be persistent about it and eventually things will change,” Martin said. “It’s tough to do but we shouldn’t give up. It is too important.”
The fair was held less than a week after Governor J.B. Pritzker signed legislation banning “assault weapons” which faces an uncertain future.
“After Highland Park we all want that and for sure, we will feel safer,” she said.
Duffy, a Glenbrook South senior, offered a similar viewpoint.
“We are in it for the long game,” he said. “It is not going to take a month or a year, it is probably going to take decades. We might not see extreme comprehensive gun control laws until very late in our lifetime but that is OK because we are in it for the long game. We will fight for as long as it takes to have a safer society.”
Daniel I. Dorfman is a freelance reporter with Pioneer Press.