Mayor Hagerty Holds Gun Violence Forum Following Violent Week

EVANSTON, IL — Mayor Steve Hagerty convened a community meeting Thursday to discuss actionable steps to address gun violence. Hagerty announced the meeting at this week's City Council meeting in response to recent deadly shootings of 20-year-old Yakez Semark in Evanston, Chicago Police Cmdr. Paul Bauer in the Loop and 17 students in Parkland, Florida.

Hagerty said the violent week made him feel "a little hopeless and a little sad," particularly for the families of those affected by gun violence and for the country's inability to "recognize that we need to step up and do something after these, that we can't just have one after another."

The mayor pointed to the 30,000 annual gun deaths in the country, 12,000 gun homicides and hundreds of shootings every year in Chicago. Hagerty said earlier he has signed a statement of principals of Mayors Against Illegal Guns, a program of Everytown for Gun Safety.

"It feels right that we have to get together and we have to talk about actionable things that each of us can do," Hagerty told the dozens of attendees in the Civic Center, who included several residents who have lost family to gun violence.

Watch the full event:

Speakers:

• Rev. David Jones
• Denyse Stoneback, founder of People for a Safer Society
• Dr. Marjorie Fujara, pediatrician at John H. Stroger Jr. Hospital of Cook County in Chicago
• Dr. Tracy Kurtzer, Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America
• Evanston community members