Democrats Respond to Illinois Parade Shooting by Calling for More Gun Control Laws

President Joe Biden and other top Democrats suggested they want more gun control laws passed following the mass shooting at a parade in Highland Park, Illinois, that left at least six dead and more injured on Monday.

“I have spoken to Governor Pritzker and Mayor Rotering, and have offered the full support of the Federal government to their communities,” he said in a statement released by the White House, referring to Gov. J.B. Pritzker and Mayor Nancy Rotering, both Democrats.

Biden then suggested that he will support more gun laws. “I recently signed the first major bipartisan gun reform legislation in almost thirty years into law, which includes actions that will save lives. But there is much more work to do, and I’m not going to give up fighting the epidemic of gun violence,” the statement said.

On Tuesday, Sen. Dick Durbin (D-Ill.), the No. 2 Democrat in the Senate, called for more restrictions on purchasing certain types of rifles.

“Let me tell you, we all know, at least some of us do, it’s not enough,” Durbin told CNN. “You know, [that] they still think that a shooter can buy a weapon that is really designed for the military to kill people in volume, and has no sport or hunting purpose, and turn that weapon loose on an innocent crowd in Highland Park tells us there’s much more to be done.”

Fellow Illinois Sen. Tammy Duckworth, a Democrat, also issued a statement after Monday’s shooting and claimed that “we can’t stop there,” adding Congress has to “pass additional commonsense reforms.” She did not elaborate.

And Sen. Ed Markey (D-Mass.) agreed that Congress should take up new gun control measures, according to a Twitter post he made after the mass shooting.

In 2013, Rotering signed an ordinance (pdf) that banned certain types of firearms