Gun Violence Awareness Month

Floor Speech

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Ms. KELLY of Illinois. Mr. Speaker, I thank the Congresswoman for convening us tonight on this extremely important topic. Mr. Speaker, I rise today because, as we all know, there is a gun violence epidemic in our country. It is a public health crisis.

Yet, our President is actively making this crisis worse. I don't know if the Congresswoman realized this, but 10 years ago yesterday, Katherine Clark, the late, great John Lewis, John Larson, David Cicilline, and myself led the sit-in on the floor because we could not get any movement to deal with gun violence prevention. I am proud to say the Democrats all participated in that sit-in that lasted almost 24 hours.

Nothing happened right away, but we were making a statement that needed to be made, and, eventually, we did get a Bipartisan Safer Communities Act. But we all know more needs to be done.

This past Juneteenth weekend, nearly 40 people were shot in Chicago, and 7 people died. What should have been a celebration of freedom turned into a horrific reminder that we are not free from gun violence. President Trump responded on Truth Social by claiming that he can make Chicago a safe city in one month.

Mr. President, you do have the power to make Chicago safer. Release the funding that you froze to provide support for community violence intervention organizations. You stole $16 million that should have gone to CBI organizations in Chicago. Those closer to the problem are closest to the solution. Give those funds back to our city.

You can also reopen the White House Office of Gun Violence Prevention. You can tell the ATF to overturn their 30 new rules that make it easier to traffic illegal guns and harder for law enforcement to investigate gun crimes.

I know that the President will not put forward any of these real solutions to gun violence because, frankly, he really doesn't care. Instead, he once again threatened the deployment of the National Guard to Chicago.

The National Guard will not make our cities safer, but it will cost taxpayers millions and millions and millions of dollars like it is doing in D.C.

Let's be truthful about the real reason why President Trump wants to deploy the National Guard. It is not to reduce crime. It is to instill fear and abuse his power. It is to reinforce ICE agents who have terrorized our city and targeted people based on the color of their skin.

For generations, Black communities have been burdened with the consequences of being underinvestigated and overpoliced. While gun violence became the leading cause of death for all children and teenagers in 2020, it has been the leading cause of death for Black children since 2006.

We talk about the death, but how many people and families have survived, and the mental and physical damage--everybody doesn't die, but the mental and physical damage of those survivors is vast.

Chicago has worked to reduce these efforts, and last summer, murders were at the lowest rate since 1965.

We have seen success because of our local efforts, our CBI programs, and our local police rebuilding trust with the community. We know there is more to be done: ban on assault weapons, safe storage, resources that help those organizations on the ground, and I can go on and on and on.

People deserve the right to be able to play in a park, ride on a bus, come out of choir practice, get off the bus, and get tea from Starbucks.

This is the only country in the developed world that has issues so severe as this.

We need a President and more Members of Congress to realize no one is truly safe until we are all safe, and we need to do more around gun violence prevention.

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