This year’s Independence Day was uniquely American: 4 July celebrations were targeted by mass shooters. Several people were killed by a young white man in Highland Park, a heavily Jewish neighbourhood outside of Chicago, during a holiday parade. As news updates rolled in, reports broke that there was another attack during 4 July celebrations in Philadelphia – this time, two police officers were shot.
In the hours following the mass shooting in Highland Park, President Joe Biden, speaking at an event for military families, referenced the attack saying, “Each day we’re reminded there’s nothing guaranteed about our democracy, nothing guaranteed about our way of life. We have to fight for it, defend it and earn it by voting.” Unsurprisingly, the response disappointed many on the left. Democrats currently control the White House, the House of Representatives and the Senate. Yet the bipartisan gun control legislation that passed in June – prompted by the 24 May school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, and the first such measures passed in decades – did not prohibit the purchase of assault rifles and would not have stopped this massacre.
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