Timothy Wheeler, MD

We pretty much knew it would happen, but we didn’t think it would be so soon. Barely two weeks into the 114th Congress, Chicago congresswoman Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) has introduced H.R. 224, which would require newly-confirmed surgeon general and gun control zealot Vivek Murthy “to submit to Congress an annual report on the effects of gun violence on public health.” The bill is taken almost word for word from The Kelly Report, a multi-authored, gun control perpetual wish list released last year from Kelly’s office. The bill comes not even a year after Murthy swore to a U.S. Senate committee that he would not use his position to push for gun control.

Average citizens may see the Kelly Report and its derivative legislation as flotsam in the endless river of studies, blue ribbon panels, and position papers flowing from Washington, but long-time observers of the public health gun prohibition movement will see old familiar faces. Authors of the Kelly Report include such veteran gun control advocates as Harvard’s David Hemenway, Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel, The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence (formerly known as Handgun Control, Inc.), and National Urban League President and former New Orleans mayor Marc Morial. Nothing on their agenda—mandatory “universal” background checks, mandatory “smart” guns, regulating guns as consumer products, to name a few—is new except the recruitment of fervently anti-gun rights Surgeon General Murthy to carry the banner.

The new congress must make sure that Kelly’s attempt to restart the public health anti-gun propaganda machine dies aborning, and that Surgeon General Murthy resists his urges to meddle with the right to keep and bear arms.

—Timothy Wheeler, MD is director of Doctors for Responsible Gun Ownership, a project of the Second Amendment Foundation.

All DRGO articles by Timothy Wheeler, MD.