Key keywords: Tiffany Henyard, former Dolton Mayor, gun violence action, father shot incident, South Suburban Chicago gun control, 2024 gun safety advocacy, ghost gun regulation, Cook County community violence intervention, cross-regional gun policy summit Former Dolton Mayor Tiffany Henyard issued an impassioned call for sweeping gun policy reform this week, days after her 68-year-old father was struck by a stray bullet while driving through a residential neighborhood in Harvey, Illinois, a neighboring city of Dolton in South Suburban Cook County. According to local law enforcement reports, the shooting occurred on the evening of July 12, when an altercation between two groups on a nearby sidewalk escalated into gunfire. Henyard’s father, who was not targeted in the incident, was hit in the shoulder while stopped at a red light. He was transported to a local hospital in stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery after surgery earlier this week. Henyard, who served as mayor of Dolton from 2021 to 2025, made gun violence prevention a core priority during her tenure, launching the city’s first community violence intervention program, hosting annual gun buyback events that removed more than 400 illegal firearms from local streets, and partnering with local school districts to implement active shooter safety training for students and staff. In a press conference held outside the hospital where her father is recovering, Henyard said the personal tragedy has reinforced her commitment to pushing for stronger, enforceable gun safety laws at the state and federal level. “For years, I’ve stood on podiums and talked about gun violence as a public health crisis, but until you get that 2 a.m. phone call saying your own parent has been shot, you can’t fully grasp the terror that thousands of families in our region live with every single day,” Henyard told reporters. “We have half-measures in place in Illinois, but they are not enough. Ghost guns are still flowing freely across our borders, community violence intervention programs are drastically underfunded, and there is no coordinated strategy across south suburban municipalities to track and intercept illegal gun trafficking.” Henyard announced that she will convene a regional gun safety summit on August 5, inviting mayors of 17 south suburban Cook County cities, Illinois State Police leadership, community violence intervention organizers, and families affected by gun violence to draft a unified policy agenda to present to the Illinois General Assembly this fall. She is also calling on Governor J.B. Pritzker to sign an executive order expanding background check requirements for all private gun sales in the state, and for federal lawmakers to pass legislation banning the manufacture and sale of untraceable ghost guns nationwide. Recent data from the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office shows that gun-related homicides and non-fatal shootings in South Suburban Chicago have risen 21% in the first seven months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, with 62% of victims being innocent bystanders not involved in the activity that led to the shooting.