Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Ill., says gun violence should be considered a public health issue, and she is promoting legislation that would require the federal government to treat it as such.
Kelly, who represents a deep-blue Chicagoland district, is the author of a first-of-its-kind bill to require the surgeon general to study gun violence as a public health issue. The nation’s leading health expert would examine shootings the way he does diabetes or heart disease, delivering an annual report to Congress about the economic and healthcare costs as well as the mental health effects of gun violence.
Such a report, in Kelly’s view, could help tip the balance of the gun control debate toward stricter regulation by laying out the numbers relating to gun violence and presenting the problem as one of public health rather than of gun rights.
Kelly, 63, introduced her bill just a few months after the National Rifle Association on Twitter told “self-important anti-gun doctors” to “stay in their lane” and keep far away from the gun violence debate, spurring a major backlash that included thousands of medical professionals posting graphic photos of bloody emergency rooms and scrubs soiled during treatment of gunshot victims. Kelly has 48 co-sponsors on the bill, H.B. 1114, none of whom are Republicans.
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Kelly calls the idea that doctors shouldn’t tell patients about the risks of guns “absolutely ridiculous.”
“They are well in their lane. It’s a big lane,” she told the Washington Examiner.
Only trauma surgeons and emergency room doctors can fully grasp the ramifications of violence inflicted with guns, supporters of Kelly’s bill argue. By treating victims, physicians gain an understanding of the human costs of shootings that participants in the gun rights debate lack.
The NRA has long opposed having federal agencies research shootings as public health incidents. Gun rights supporters instead generally couch the issue as one of rights, specifically the right guaranteed by the Second Amendment.
Kelly represents Illinois’ 2nd Congressional District, which comprises Chicago suburbs and parts of southeast Chicago, an area of the city where gun violence is common. The district has already suffered 106 gun violence injuries and deaths this year, according to the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit organization that aggregates data about gun violence. Some of the most recent incidents were drive-by shootings that took place in broad daylight.
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Kelly began her career in public service working in local counseling centers. Before embarking on a career in politics, she studied psychology and counseling with the intention of being a child psychologist, a line of study motivated in part by her parents’ divorce.
She was sworn into the U.S. House in 2013, after more than a decade in the Illinois House of Representatives. Gun safety reform features prominently in her platform, and she says she remains acutely aware of the violence plaguing her district.
Her studies in psychology play a role in her commitment to gun control legislation. The majority of deaths by firearms are suicides, and Kelly is dedicated to improving youth access to mental healthcare to treat those with severe depression, anxiety, and other disorders.
Research shows that people with serious mental illness are more often victims of gun violence than perpetrators. However, Kelly says her colleagues like to “blame mental health” for homicidal gun deaths, which account for only about 40% of all gun fatalities and injuries. She says blaming mental illness for attacks reproduces an unhelpful stigma and undercuts the mission to improve healthcare access for nonviolent individuals who are suffering from mental illness.
The tragedies unfolding in Kelly’s district are wearying, she says, but they serve as a reminder of the need for legislation. “That’s what actually keeps me going.”
