As I stated above, we are losing our freedoms because of the radical right.
So, how can Americans celebrate "freedoms" on the 4th of July when Republicans are taking them away?
Another freedom that we are rapidly losing is the freedom of "Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". We are losing our freedom just to live our every day normal lives by going out to an event and enjoying ourselves.
Republicans with their insane pro gun laws have made it possible for anyone to get easy access to military grade assault weapons in red states. All one has to do is buy a weapon in a red state with loose gun laws and take it into a blue state with strict gun laws to commit their act of violence. And this happens in Illinois every single day.
Today is Independence Day, and the people of Highland Park, Illinois can't even celebrate America's Birthday because of a mass shooter shooting up a 4th of July parade. So, Americans have lost their freedom to watch a parade in safety and not be killed while doing it.
There was a recent poll where 44% of Republicans said we should "learn to accept mass shootings" in order to allow military weapons to still be sold. Are these people insane? They actually want their lives to be endangered each day where they could be shot just so military assault weapons can still be sold.
These weapons have no business being sold on the market. They are designed for the battlefield. No 18 year old should be allowed to use a high powered weapon that can shoot hundreds of rounds of ammo per minute. They are using these weapons to murder innocent people.
These mass shootings have happened everywhere in America. Large cities, suburbs, and small towns so nobody is safe from a mass shooter. Yet, Republicans continue to do the bare minimum and still allow this carnage to take place.
If you can't even celebrate Independence Day without a mass shooting taking place, then you know there's a major problem and we are losing our freedoms.
If you go back 30, 40, 50 years...people never had to deal with mass shootings. They had their freedom to go anywhere and watch an event without the risk of being shot. That's because these military assault weapons were not circulating in our cities in mass quantities.
We still should have the same freedom folks decades ago had, but with Republicans and their gun fetish, we can no longer go in public without the risk of a mass shooting. That's how Republicans want us to live our lives. That's no way to live and we have no freedom to be safe. That's why these Republicans need to be voted out so we can restore our freedom and safety. With Republicans in control, we will lose more of our freedoms and gun violence will continue to get worse.
6 dead, more than two dozen hospitalized in mass shooting at Highland Park Fourth of July parade; shooter soughtThe shooter appeared to have fired “a high-powered rifle” from a rooftop, police said. “This doesn’t happen here,” said a witness who ran to safety with his family. “It shouldn’t happen anywhere.”
Police in Highland Park escort people Monday afternoon who had sought a safe place after a shooter with a high-powered rifle opened fire hours earlier at Highland Park’s Fourth of July parade.Six people were killed and more than two dozen others wounded when a gunman used a high-powered rifle to fire from a rooftop on people attending the Highland Park Fourth of July parade Monday.
Authorities continued to hunt Monday afternoon for the shooter, and “the offender still has not been apprehended so far,” Christopher Covelli of the Lake County sheriff’s office and the Lake County major crimes task force said at a news conference hours after the shooting.
The gunman used “a high-powered rifle,” Covelli said and fired from a rooftop. “He was very discreet and very difficult to see.”
He called the crime “very random, very intentional,” and he called it “a very sad day.”
It appeared that the gunman had used a ladder to get to the building’s roof, authorities said.
The FBI asked that anyone who had video of the shooting or possible information about the shooter call their toll-free tipline at (800) CALL-FBI. As of 3:30 p.m., authorities said the shooter was still being sought but said they’d made “progress” toward finding him.
By 3:30 p.m., investigators were focusing their manhunt the downtown area bounded by Green Bay Road, Laurel Avenue, St. John’s Avenue and Elm Place, according to Highland Park police Cmdr. Chris O’Neill. People outside that area no longer were being asked to shelter in place.
Lake County Coroner Jennifer Banek said five people were dead at the scene, all adults, and another died at a hospital. It wasn’t clear how old the sixth victim was.
All of the victims have been identified, though authorities still were notifying families as of 3:30 p.m.
Dozens of the injured were taken to Highland Park Hospital, Lake Forest Hospital and Evanston Hospital. The “vast majority” were treated for gunshot wounds, though some “sustained injuries as a result of the ensuing chaos at the parade,” according to NorthShore University Health Systems, which owns the Highland Park and Evanston hospitals.
Authorities said a child was among those wounded and was hospitalized in critical condition.
One witness said he counted more than 20 shots.
Miles Zaremski, a Highland Park resident, told the Chicago Sun-Times: “I heard 20 to 25 shots, which were in rapid succession. So it couldn’t have been just a handgun or a shotgun.”
Miles Zaremski, a Highland Park resident, told the Chicago Sun-Times: “I heard 20 to 25 shots, which were in rapid succession. So it couldn’t have been just a handgun or a shotgun.”
Zaremski said he saw “people in that area that got shot,” including “a woman covered with blood . . . She did not survive.”
Terrified parade-goers fled Highland Park’s Fourth of July parade after shots were fired, leaving behind their belongings as they sought safety.As they fled the parade route on Central Street in downtown Highland Park, panicked parade-goers left behind chairs, baby strollers and blankets as they sought cover, not knowing just what happened. Even as people ran, a klezmer band, seemingly unaware of the gunfire, continued to play.
O’Neill said that a rifle the gunman used has been recovered and that the suspect appeared to be 18 to 20 years old, white and wearing a blue T-shirt.
Adrienne Drell, a former Sun-Times reporter, said she was sitting on a curb along Central Avenue watching the parade when she saw members of the Highland Park High School marching band start to run.
“Go to Sunset,” Drell said she heard the students shout, directing people to nearby Sunset Foods.
A man picked her up off the curb and urged her to get out, Drell said.
“There’s panic in the whole town,” she said. “Everyone is just stunned beyond belief.”
She ran across to a nearby parking lot with other people who had been watching the parade.
“It was a quiet, peaceful, lovely morning, people were enjoying the parade,” Drell said. “Within seconds, to have that peacefulness suddenly ripped apart, it’s scary. You can’t go anywhere, you can’t find peace. I think we are falling apart.”
Eric Trotter, 37, who lives blocks from the shooting, echoed that sentiment.
“I felt shocked,” Trotter said. “How could this happen in a peaceful community like Highland Park.”
As police cars sped by on Central Avenue, sirens blaring, Alexander Sandoval, 39, sat on a bench and cried. He’d gotten up before 7 a.m. to set up lawn chairs and a blanket in front of the main stage of the parade. He lives within walking distance from there, so he went home to have breakfast with his son, partner and stepdaughter before going back for the parade.
Hours later, he said he and his family ran after hearing the gunfire, afraid for their lives.
“We saw the Navy’s marchers and float pass by, and, when I first heard the gunshots, I thought it was them saluting the flag and shooting blanks,” Sandoval said. “But then I saw people starting to run, and the shots kept going. We started running.”
He said that, in the chaos, he and his partner Amairani Garcia ran in different directions, he with his 5-year-old son Alex, she with her 6-year-old daughter Melani.
“I grabbed my son and tried to break into one of the local buildings, but I couldn’t,” Sandoval said. “The shooting stopped. I guess he was reloading. So I kept running and ran into an alley and put my son in a garbage dumpster so he could be safe.”
Then, he said he ran in search of the rest of his family and saw bodies in pools of blood on the ground.
“I saw a little boy who was shot being carried away,” Sandoval said. “It was just terror.”
He found his partner and stepdaughter, safe, inside a McDonald’s nearby.
“This doesn’t happen here,” he said. “It shouldn’t happen anywhere.”
Don Johnson, 76. who lives about two blocks from the shooting scene, thought at first the gunfire was a car backfiring. He said he ran with several other people to a nearby BP gas station and described the scene as “surreal.”
“It’s just a terrible thing,” he said. “I never wouldn’t thought this would’ve happened in downtown Highland Park.”
Johnson said his daughter lives in Chicago with her son and that he’s been urging them to move to Highland Park, telling her recently, “It’s safe.”
Now, he said, it’s clear that “it can happen anywhere.”
David Goldenberg, the Midwest regional director of the Anti-Defamation League, was among those at the parade. He’d gone early to set up chairs for his family along the parade route. He said he ended up moving their chairs to be closer to friends.
If not for that, Goldenberg said, “We would have been awfully close” to the shooting.
“It was chaotic,” he said. “Those sorts of things that you hear about — those split-second moments accounting for everyone in your family as people are yelling, ‘There’s a shooter! There’s a gun!’ ”
He said he knows of an adult who was killed, though he declined to discuss details.
Gov. J.B. Pritzker called on “all Illinoisans to pray for the families who have been devastated by the evil unleashed this morning in Highland Park, for those who have lost loved ones and for those who have been injured.
“There are no words for the kind of monster who lies in wait and fires into a crowd of families with children celebrating a holiday with their community. There are no words for the kind of evil that robs our neighbors of their hopes, their dreams, their futures.
“We must — and we will — end this plague of gun violence.”
Responding to the Highland Park shooting, President Joe Biden said in a written statement: “Jill and I are shocked by the senseless gun violence that has yet again brought grief to an American community on this Independence Day.”
News of the shooting spree in Highland Park prompted other suburbs to cancel their Fourth of July celebrations.
Former Obama White House adviser David Alexrod tweeted that someone he knew was at the parade, writing: “A friend took his kids to July 4th Parade in Highland Park today. His son has special needs. When shots rang out, they ran for their lives, the dad pushing his grown son’s wheelchair —which at one point tumbled over. On America’s day, what has become a sickeningly American story.”
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