Gunfire at 4th of July parade kills at least 6 in US

A shooting on the route of the Fourth of July parade in Highland Park, an affluent Chicago suburb, left at least six people dead and 24 injured on Monday, the city’s website said. The shooter is still at large, according to police.

The parade was suddenly stopped when shots were fired about ten minutes after it started, prompting hundreds of people to run for cover. Witnesses told WGN that they believed the gunman was shooting from the roof of a store.

The festivities of the date, which commemorates the independence of the United States, were canceled by the city hall of Highland Park, a city located 40 kilometers north of downtown Chicago and home to about 30,000 people, mostly white.

The Sheriff’s Department asked the public to clear the site so police and first responders could do their jobs. Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot said extra policing will be done on Chicago’s west and south sides.

Representative Brad Schneider, whose constituency includes Highland Park, said he and his campaign team were meeting at the start of the parade when the shooting broke out. “Hearing about the loss of life and others injured. My condolences to the families and loved ones. My prayers for the injured and my community,” Schneider wrote on Twitter. “Enough!”

Amarani Garcia, a witness who was at the parade with her young daughter, told the local ABC affiliate she heard gunfire nearby, then a pause for the gunman to allegedly reload his weapon, then shots again.

There were “people screaming and running. It was really traumatizing,” Garcia said. “I was really scared. I hid with my daughter actually in a little shop. It just makes me feel like we’re not safe anymore.”

Highland Park accounted for 98 violent crimes per 100,000 residents, less than a quarter of the statewide rate, according to the latest 2019 FBI statistic available.

The attack comes at a time when gun violence is fresh on Americans’ minds — on May 24, a gunman killed 19 schoolchildren and two teachers in Uvalde, Texas. A few days earlier, an attack took the lives of ten people at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

The massacres have put access to guns once again under debate in the country, just months before legislative elections in November, which led to the drafting of a bipartisan agreement with new restrictions on gun ownership, approved by President Joe Biden at the end of June.

The move represents the biggest change to the country’s legislation on the subject since the 1990s, including greater background checks on gun buyers and allocating more federal funds to mental health programs.

Although considered modest by the Democratic Party, the new legislation is the biggest advance in gun control in the last 30 years, when it adopted a broad restriction on assault weapons, capable of firing more shots in less time. The measure, however, expired in 2004 and was not renewed.

In the background check, the law provides that the evaluation for gun buyers under the age of 21 will be carried out within ten working days, so that authorities have more time to review the history of school and mental health infractions. The text also determines the expansion of the power of authorities to confiscate weapons from people who are acting in a threatening way.

The law sets even more federal funds to strengthen school security, expand mental health programs and efforts to identify people who could commit shootings.