The Highland Park Fourth of July parade shooter, now 24 years old, was handed down seven life sentences this week by Illinois Judge Victoria Rossetti. And while justice was certainly served in the courtroom, it doesn’t come close to restoring the shattered lives left in the wake of this avoidable tragedy. The left loves to talk about “gun control” and “rehabilitation,” but this case is a stark reminder of how evil walks among us—and how soft-on-crime policies and cultural rot can allow it to fester until it explodes.
Judge Rossetti didn’t mince words. She called the killer “irrevocably depraved” and declared him “beyond any rehabilitation.” That kind of moral clarity is rare these days in courtrooms dominated by progressive judges eager to hand down light sentences and give violent criminals yet another chance. Not Rossetti. Not this time. She made sure the world knew that the man who opened fire on innocent Americans during a parade celebrating this country has no place in a civilized society. Her sentence: life behind bars, seven times over.
The Highland Park massacre, which took place on July 4, 2022, was one of the deadliest public shootings in recent memory. As Breitbart News reported at the time, early estimates were already grim—six dead, 25 wounded. That number quickly climbed to seven dead and over 50 injured once the smoke cleared and the chaos was accounted for. This wasn’t a random act of violence. It was calculated, evil, and perpetrated by someone who had no business roaming free in the first place.
The shooter pleaded guilty to 69 charges—murder, attempted murder, and everything in between. Let that sink in. Sixty-nine charges. It’s the kind of number you hear and wonder: how did we get here? How did a young man reach this point without anyone stepping in? And more importantly, how many warning signs were ignored?
One thing’s clear: the state of Illinois, run by soft-handed Democrat politicians who gutted the death penalty in 2011, couldn’t deliver the punishment this monster actually deserved. Life in prison is the maximum he could get. But for many, it still doesn’t feel like enough. When you massacre children, parents, and veterans at a patriotic celebration, you forfeit your right to exist among the living. Yet in Illinois, there will be no execution, no final justice. Just a taxpayer-funded existence behind bars. This is the result of a state that has bowed to the left’s radical anti-death penalty crusade—an ideology that forgets the victims in its rush to “humanize” the criminal.
Adding insult to injury, the shooter didn’t even bother to show up for his sentencing. Not a shred of remorse. Not a moment of accountability. Just cowardice. That kind of contempt for the victims and their families is exactly what fuels public anger toward a system that so often protects the rights of murderers while trampling over the dignity of the innocent.
Of course, the usual suspects will try to spin this tragedy as yet another reason to push gun control. But here’s the truth they won’t say out loud: the system already failed. The shooter slipped through the cracks. The culture of silence, the erosion of family structure, and the normalization of mental instability without consequences—that’s what allowed this to happen. Not the Second Amendment. Not law-abiding gun owners.
This case is a painful reminder that evil is real and justice, in its truest form, requires more than a courtroom sentence. It requires a society with moral clarity, strong institutions, and leaders willing to defend the innocent rather than coddle the wicked. The people of Highland Park deserved safety. They deserved to celebrate America’s birthday without fear. Instead, they became victims of a system that lost its way long before the first shot was fired.
If we want to prevent the next Highland Park, we need to look beyond the gun and into the mirror of a culture that refuses to call out evil until it’s too late. Seven life sentences may keep one monster off the streets. But how many more are still out there, waiting?