They’ve marched in protests. They’ve talked to their lawmakers. They’ve gone to Washington.
And they’ve watched with horror as mass shootings have happened again and again across the U.S., including in their hometown.
Now a group of Highland Park volunteers, fed up with easy access to assault rifles like the one used in the July 4th, 2022 parade shooting, are targeting the supply chains of companies that produce the military-grade weapons so often used in such attacks.
The founders of the Highland Park Peace Project aren’t just going after Smith & Wesson, Sig Sauer and other gun makers.
Instead, they’re aiming for the bottom lines of companies that do business with them, compiling a public database of dozens of law firms, banks, retailers and more, and branding them as “enablers” of violence or “heroes” in their movement — and encouraging consumers to spend accordingly.
“We’re coming at it from an angle that is capitalism-based, rather than waiting around for legislative action,” said Highland Park Peace Project co-founder Stephanie Jacobs, who narrowly escaped the parade shooting herself.
“By taking action against those businesses, it’s our hope that we can disrupt the system that allows these mass shootings to continue,” co-founder Daniel Perlman said.
Jacobs, a corporate attorney and lifelong Highland Park resident, was first spurred to action as a gun violence prevention advocate in the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting that left 26 people dead in 2012.
But while serving as a board member of several violence prevention groups and lobbying members of Congress, Jacobs kept running into familiar walls.
“The legislative process is hamstrung,” Jacobs said of the nation’s lack of reform on gun laws.
So she was devastated, “but not surprised” when three years ago she realized it was gunfire and not a marching band’s drummers making the popping noises that started panic in downtown Highland Park on Independence Day.
Shortly before the parade, other family members had beckoned Jacobs and her husband to a different spot across the street. “Had we gone to where we were originally supposed to sit, that’s where many of the victims were,” she said.
They were able to run into a store and away from the violence, “but the trauma that we experienced, that so many of my kids’ friends experienced and still to this day experience is real,” Jacobs said. “We’re just one community of thousands in this country that experiences things like this, whether it’s at a school or a bowling alley or a parade.”
The shooting was the major impetus towards Illinois’ assault weapons ban signed into law by Gov. JB Pritzker in January 2023.
At an event celebrating the ban soon afterward, Jacobs met Perlman, another Highland Park attorney who shared the idea he’d been batting around after observing public pension fund leaders pressuring private equity investors to divest from gun makers.
“Some of them have said to the sponsors, ‘If you’re going to invest in the manufacturers of weapons, then we need an opt-out clause,’” Perlman said.
They decided to try to bring the same pressure from consumers at large to the companies doing business with assault-weapon producers: publicly shame those that do, and endorse those that don’t.
Jacobs, Perlman and their tight-knit group of volunteers with the nonprofit Highland Park Peace Project launched their online database earlier this summer, with a “scorecard” system intended to inform consumers which ones they consider gun violence “enablers,” and those they hail as “heroes.”
Their website, hppeaceproject.org, grades the international chemical company Celanese Inc. as an “enabler” for holding “a trademark for the polymer Zytel which is sold to Smith & Wesson to be used in their manufacturing process.” TD Bank Group and TD Securities get the same grade for serving as lenders to Smith & Wesson.
Among others, the volunteer group also calls out Bass Pro Shops for selling several models of semi-automatic long rifles, as well as Mastercard, which they note is an “acceptable form of payment for use in purchasing assault weapons direct to consumer.”
A TD spokesperson declined to comment. Representatives for the other alleged “enablers” did not respond to requests for comment.
The Highland Park Peace Project positively highlights companies like Salesforce for its “publicly stated policy prohibiting its products to be used to advertise or sell assault weapons,” and Costco for keeping “any products made by leading assault weapons manufacturers” off their shelves.
Small decisions, like deciding to shop at Costco rather than Walmart — which the Peace Project labels an “enabler” for selling guns online — could eventually add up to make such sales a losing business proposition, the volunteers say.
“We’re asking every community and every decision-maker, every business, organization, governmental entity, to make a difference with us,” Perlman said. “Right now we’re only one step away from making a change, and that’s getting individuals engaged.”