Gov. J.B. Pritzker, Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering urge President Biden to take federal action on guns

Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Highland Park Mayor Nancy Rotering urged President Joe Biden to press for a federal ban on certain semi-automatic weapons during a visit to the White House on Monday, one week after a gunman killed seven and wounded dozens more in the North Shore suburb.

Pritzker and Rotering were among guests at an event to mark the passage of a bipartisan gun safety law approved in the aftermath of mass shootings in Buffalo, New York, and Uvalde, Texas, in May. The new law includes federal funding to help states implement so-called red-flag laws, like the one Illinois enacted in 2019, that allow courts to confiscate weapons temporarily from those deemed dangerous to themselves or others.

Speaking with Biden before the event, Pritzker and Rotering emphasized that action on gun restrictions should not be left to the states.

“We expressed to the president our desire to see more done at the federal level, particularly a ban on assault weapons, a ban on high-capacity magazines,” Pritzker told reporters after the event. “He agrees that more needs to be done, and he is passionate about that.”

Despite deep partisan and regional divisions on guns, Rotering said she thinks Biden can build support for a federal ban — which the president has said he supports — “by speaking to the values that we all share as Americans.”

“We all share a love of freedom. We also share a love of helping our children grow up in a clean and safe society,” Rotering said. “We also share a love and appreciation for our first responders. Our first responders are outgunned by the combat weapons.”

During his remarks to hundreds of guests on the South Lawn, Biden acknowledged Rotering and Pritkzer and thanked them for their response to the July 4 shooting, which authorities say was carried out with a legally purchased semi-automatic rifle.

“We had a number of conversations immediately after the attack in Highland Park, and I’ve been impressed with the way they’ve handled things,” Biden said. “It’s been extraordinary. And as the three of us have discussed, we have more to do.”

Later in his speech, Biden recounted his role as a senator in passing a 1994 ban on certain semi-automatic weapons and how mass shootings increased after it lapsed in 2004.

“I’m determined to ban these weapons again and high-capacity magazines that hold 30 rounds that let mass shooters fire hundreds of bullets in a matter of minutes,” Biden said. “I’m not going to stop until we do it.”

The prospects for achieving such an agenda remain murky at best in an election year when Democrats hold a narrow House majority and rely on Vice President Kamala Harris to break ties in an evenly divided Senate.

The effectiveness of such a ban also is a subject of debate, though some research suggests banning high-capacity magazines could be effective at preventing mass casualties.

In heavily Democratic Illinois, however, an effort to restrict semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines statewide may be gaining momentum.

A proposal state Rep. Maura Hirschauer of Batavia filed in the Illinois House earlier this year, which has yet to have even a committee hearing, had 52 sponsors as of Monday. Nearly all of them signed on after the Highland Park shooting.

“There are many, many people that have approached me, that have approached … other people in leadership (to say) that it’s time we pass this bill,” state Rep. Robyn Gabel of Evanston, an assistant majority leader in the House, said last week. “When it happens in your own state, I think it hits people a little harder and people recognize the need to do something.”

A special legislative session is planned for the coming months on abortion access, but taking a vote on strict gun safety measures before the November election could put the dwindling number of downstate Democrats in a politically perilous position.

Pritzker, who supports a statewide ban, told reporters at the White House on Monday that a federal ban would be most effective.

“Banning assault weapons just in the city of Highland Park or just in the state of Illinois won’t effectively keep assault weapons from coming into the streets of Illinois,” Pritzker said. “And so we need this to be national. Look at every state around us. There are very few restrictions in Indiana and Missouri and Wisconsin and Iowa and Kentucky.”

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Pritzker’s Washington stop came as a New York Times/Siena College poll released Monday showed nearly two-thirds of Democratic voters said they’d prefer someone other than Biden at the top of the ticket in 2024.

Pritzker, who has positioned himself as a national leader on abortion and now gun control, is seen as a possible alternative and spurred that speculation with a visit to New Hampshire, a key Democratic presidential primary state, in June.

Pritzker told reporters he and Biden did not discuss politics Monday, and previously has said he supports a second term for Biden and is running for reelection in November to serve another four years as governor.

Pritzker’s rival in that election, Republican state Sen. Darren Bailey of Xenia, issued a statement Monday criticizing the governor for being “in D.C. hobnobbing with his elite friends when he should be home answering for his soft on crime bills.”

“This morning six men were in a shootout in the South Loop, which is starting to look like the O.K. Corral,” Bailey said. “Families and jobs are fleeing daily due to rising crime and taxes. This is all on your watch, Pritzker. Stop running for president, J.B., and do your job. It’s time to provide relief, catch criminals and keep families safe. Lives depend on it.”

Also at the White House event Monday was Cook County Board President Toni Preckwinkle, who said she hopes that future legislative efforts aimed at preventing gun violence focus not only on mass shootings “but the sort of drip drip drip of homicides and victims in places like Chicago,” which “doesn’t get the attention it needs and deserves — partly because of who the victims are, but partly because they aren’t mass events.”

“It’s a tragedy when comfortable people in Highland Park are victims of a mass shooting like this, but it’s not a tragedy when nine people were killed that same weekend and 54 shot that same weekend in the streets of Chicago in Black and brown neighborhoods?” Preckwinkle asked.

Chicago Tribune’s A.D. Quig contributed.