In recognition of the 125 Americans killed by gun violence every year, the Geneva City Council approved a proclamation recognizing June as National Gun Violence Awareness Month.

Speaking at the June 1 City Council meeting, Geneva resident Steve McHugh, also co-lead at Illinois Be SMART, an organization that promotes gun safety, said Kane County has a lower number of deaths by guns than the national or state averages.

Yet, of the 20 gun deaths recorded in Kane County in 2024 by the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, 12 were successful suicides.

“Twenty gun-related deaths for Kane County for the entire year of 2024 is only equal to the number of children killed in just a few minutes at Sandy Hook in 2012 – and less than the 26 total people killed there at that time,” McHugh said. “In my opinion, one firearm death or injury in our town or county is one too many.”

The proclamation not only honors those who died by gun violence, but those who work to prevent deaths involving guns.

McHugh noted the Kane County Health Department distributed more than 1,200 free biometric gun safes and more than 3,000 free cable locks, McHugh said. But that only covers 6% of gun-owning households.

The Kane County Suicide Prevention Task Force and gun shop owners such as John Karatheodore of PLiNK FiREARMS on Stevens Street recently co-presented with him about firearm safety.

Fifth Ward Alderperson Mark Reinecke said gun violence is “a true public health concern.”

“When you look at homicide, suicide, accidental gun deaths together, they are among the largest killers of adolescents and young adults,” Reinecke said. “In fact, suicide and adolescents and young adults account for more deaths than all medical illnesses combined. That’s a statistic that’s hard to get your head around.”

Reinecke said if a family member or friend is struggling, depressed or angry, making threats about self-harm or harming others, the simplest thing is to take it seriously.

“Listen and trust your judgment,” Reinecke said. “Someone will almost always see the warning signs before a tragedy occurs. And so if we speak up and offer help and offer support, that’s the first step to really saving lives.”

The second step is gun safety.

“It’s simple, safe firearms storage – it’s simple –and it saves a lot of lives, it has proven impact,” Reinecke said. “Gun locks are available, they’re free.”

Reinecke also recommended storing guns in locked cases outside the house and separately from ammunition.

“It removes easy access to a weapon. And if you limit easy access, you limit impulsive actions that everyone will later regret – whether it’s a suicide or threatening someone or just an accidental discharge,” Reinecke said.

With suicide, taking away a firearm reduces the completion rate by 50%, he said. In states with safe storage laws, gun deaths by adolescents dropped 35%.

“These are simple things that we can do that take no time, very little effort that have a substantial reduction, a substantial impact,” Reinecke said.

Third Ward Alderperson Dean Kilburg recalled what he described as three unnecessary gun deaths.

While at Oak Hill Cemetery for Memorial Day, Kilburg said he stood at the grave of a Geneva High School graduate who moved out of state and was murdered during a home break-in.

“He now lies next to his parents,” Kilburg said. “Here was a life taken away too soon.”

A couple weeks ago, Kilburg said he was back in his hometown in Iowa and struck up a conversation with a police officer who had the same last name.

“We struck up a conversation. I didn’t realize it at the time, but his brother, who I knew when he was growing up with my oldest son – just a little over a year ago – took his life,” Kilburg said. “(The man) was successful in Chicago, working downtown in a high-paying job, but came back to his hometown and, for some reason, took his life. And you wonder why?”

Kilburg said his wife Linda’s father also took his life when she was 5 years old.

“It created a lot of hardship in her life, as her mother had to raise her and her two sisters without a father,” Kilburg said.

“As I think we all look back on people we’ve met or situations we’ve known gun violence has been involved, I’m hoping for a better day,” Kilburg said. “And for an effort within the United States to curb gun violence and control the distribution of guns. Because other countries have been successful. There isn’t any reason why the United States can’t be successful as well.”

The proclamation urged the public to wear orange on June 5 as National Gun Violence Awareness Day. The Wear Orange website, anti-gun violence website, wearorange.org, which is dedicated to those who lost their lives to gun violence, urges wearing orange the whole weekend. Orange is the color hunters wear to protect themselves.

It also acknowledges that support for the Second Amendment “goes hand-in-hand with keeping guns away from people with dangerous histories.”

The proclamation also names Hadiya Pendleton, a Chicago teenager who marched in the Obama presidential inaugural parade but was shot to death weeks later in January 2013.

Hadiya would have been 29 on June 2.