As Nashville police left a news conference Monday, Ashbey Beasley unexpectedly moved in front of the still-live microphones and television cameras.
Beasley then told her story: She and her son survived the Fourth of July parade mass shooting in her hometown of Highland Park, Illinois, last year, in which a gunman used an assault-style rifle to kill seven and injure dozens more people.
The two happened to be on a family vacation in Nashville this week, visiting her sister-in-law, when a shooter armed with an assault-style rifle, a pistol and a handgun killed three children and three adults at a Christian school in the city.
“How is this still happening?” Beasley asked. “How are our children still dying, and why are we failing them?”
“Aren’t you guys tired of this? You guys sick of it? We have to do something,” she said.
In the wake of last year’s parade shooting, Illinois officials did seek to do something, enacting new gun restrictions aimed at banning the sale of the kinds of firearms used in the Highland Park and Nashville shootings.
But what’s happened in Illinois in the wake of those shootings, as the Democratic-controlled state sought to impose new gun restrictions, underscores the legal and geographic hurdles gun control advocates face in imposing measures such as banning the sale of assault rifles – even in the wake of ongoing mass shootings across the country.
The pro-gun control group Everytown ranks Illinois’ gun laws as the seventh-strongest in the nation as of January.
However, the state has struggled to restrict the flow of illegal guns, particularly in Chicago. US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives firearms trace data shows that less than half the guns recovered in Illinois in 2021 – the most recent year available – were purchased in-state. Many came from…
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