RESOLUTION
WHEREAS, The Honorable William Peduto, Mayor of Pittsburgh, has called on local leaders across the nation to join with Pittsburgh in introducing legislation to ban assault weapons, large capacity ammunition devices, and other accessories that accelerate the rate of fire of these weapons; and
WHEREAS, The City of Chicago has been a leader in gun-control legislation and agrees wholeheartedly that local leaders should do all they can to ban assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and certain accessories that only serve to increase the lethal nature of firearms; and
WHEREAS, It is important to be conscious ofthe haunting tragedies caused by assault weapons, both within our own community and in the greater community ofthe United States; and
WHEREAS, Six years ago, on December 14, 2012, a man in Newtown, Connecticut, armed with three semiautomatic guns, shot his way into Sandy Hook Elementary School and shot twenty-eight people, killing six adults and twenty children; and
WHEREAS, On June 17, 2015, a man wielding a semiautomatic handgun and several high-capacity magazines shot and killed eleven people in a Charleston church during a prayer service; and
WHEREAS, On June 12, 2016, in Orlando, Florida, a man armed with a semiautomatic rifle and semiautomatic pistol equipped with high-capacity magazines shot and killed forty-nine people and injured fifty-three others in the deadliest violent incident against the LGBT community in the nation's history; and
WHEREAS, On October 1, 2017, a man committed the deadliest mass shooting in our nation's history at a music festival in Las Vegas, Nevada, firing over 1,100 shots into a crowd of concertgoers killing 58 people and injuring 851 others; and
WHEREAS, This year on Valentine's Day, a man wielding a semiautomatic rifle and several high-capacity magazines shot and killed seventeen students and teachers while injuring seventeen others at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Florida; and
WHEREAS, On October 27 of this year a man wielding a semiautomatic rifle and semiautomatic pistols shot and killed eleven people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh; and
WHEREAS, On November 19, a doctor, a pharmacy resident, and a police officer were shot and killed at Chicago's Mercy Hospital by a man firing a semiautomatic handgun; and
WHEREAS, Gun violence tears even at the fabric of our democracy, as evidenced by the shooting of a campaign worker handing out fliers for a candidate this past Sunday afternoon here in Chicago; and
WHEREAS, The City of Chicago has long been cognizant that guns continually cause tragic results, and, in order to limit these results, has banned assault weapons since 2013; and
WHEREAS, This ban on assault weapons includes semiautomatic rifles; high-capacity magazines, bump stocks, and other accessories that may accelerate the rate of fire of a semiautomatic rifle; semiautomatic shotguns; semiautomatic handguns; and machine guns; and
WHEREAS, The people of Chicago knuw all too well that military-style assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and devices such as bump stocks that accelerate a weapon's rate of fire simply serve to increase the lethal nature of violent conflicts and mass shootings, increasing the likelihood that innocent intended and unintended victims will die from fired bullets; now, therefore,
BE IT RESOLVED, That we, the Mayor and Members of the City Council of the City of Chicago, assembled this twelfth day of December, 2018, do hereby join Pittsburgh in asking other cities to reject gun violence by prohibiting assault weapons, high-capacity magazines, and accessories that increase the rate of fire of these weapons; and
BE IT FURTHER RESOLVED, That a suitable copy ofthis resolution be presented to Mayor William Peduto and the City of Pittsburgh as a symbol of our solidarity with his effort to unite local leaders against assault weapons.