Illinois group launches new ad to ban assault weapons
By Jack Baudoin for WTVO
December 29, 2022
ROCKFORD - The Illinois Legislature is preparing to take up new gun control measures, and an anti-violence group has launched a new ad to help get those measures passed.
The ad from “Protect Illinois Communities” features a mother’s emotional plea for an assault-style weapons ban in the state. Mary Dieudonne-Hill’s 19-year-old daughter was killed in 2016 when a gunman opened fire at a party near her North Carolina college campus.
Dieudonne-Hill comes from a military family, and she said that she knows all too well what assault weapons can do.
“These are not used to protect a family, to protect from an intruder, to protect someone from harming someone. It’s to destroy, kill and destroy,” Dieudonne-Hill said. “That’s for a major war, and I would hate to think that we’re living everyday in a war.”
The Democratic-led majority in Springfield hopes to pass the measure in the next two weeks, but gun rights advocates argued that it would make criminals out of law-abiding gun owners.
