Illinois Democrats on Monday criticized plans by the Kendall County Republican Party to raffle off a Smith & Wesson semi-automatic rifle similar to the one authorities say was used to kill seven people and wound dozens of others at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade.
“It is inappropriate and offensive for the Kendall County Republican Party to raffle off an assault weapon at a political fundraiser, especially a gun so similar to the one used to take seven innocent lives in Highland Park just one week ago,” U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly, chair of the state Democratic Party, said in a statement.
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Kelly called on both the state and Kendall County GOP to “show some compassion and common sense by calling off this gun raffle and ceasing the use of assault weapons in future political fundraisers and other events.”
Kendall County GOP Chairman James Marter, who lost the June 28 Republican primary for the 14th Congressional District, said the fundraiser had been in the works for months before the shooting and there are no plans to call it off.
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“The Democratic Party, whenever some evil act is committed by a lunatic, someone who’s engaged in evil … their first response is to take away the law-abiding citizens’ right to the Second Amendment, and we don’t agree in principle on those attacks on the Second Amendment,” Marter said Monday.
The Kendall County GOP on May 4 filed paperwork with the State Board of Elections to hold the raffle, records show. Among four guns to be raffled off July 24 is a Smith & Wesson 5.56/.223 semi-automatic rifle, according to the Kendall County Republican Party website.
The alleged Highland Park gunman used a Smith & Wesson M&P15, a .223-caliber semi-automatic rifle, in the shooting that he legally purchased in Illinois, authorities have said.
Marter said the Democrats’ objections are “not about one particular style, design, whatever.”
“There isn’t a firearm they wouldn’t want to ban,” he said.
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Kendall County Democratic Party Chair Brooke Shanley said local Democrats “do not oppose responsible gun ownership.”
“But we also do not need more military-style assault weapons in Kendall County,” Shanley said in a statement.
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The raffle is scheduled to take place at Mike & Denise’s pizzeria in Yorkville.
This isn’t the first time Republicans have come under criticism for raffling off guns.
The north suburban Lake Villa Republican Party was supposed to raffle off a semi-automatic rifle at a golf outing this week, but the drawing was postponed in May after the mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas.
The Republican nominee for governor, state Sen. Darren Bailey of Xenia, also has come under renewed scrutiny after the Highland Park shooting for raffling off a semi-automatic rifle in 2019 as a campaign fundraiser.
dpetrella@chicagotribune.com
