The name of U.S. Rep. Robin Kelly (D-Ill.) headlines the Kelly Report, a new manifesto identifying a long list of gun control initiatives that anti-gun activists intend to pursue in the near future. However, the document appears to be the handiwork of Michael Bloomberg, whose misleadingly-named Independence USA political action committee contributed $2.1 million to Kelly’s congressional campaign last year. With Bloomberg’s help, Kelly was elected to fill the Chicago-area seat previously held by fellow gun control supporter Jesse Jackson, Jr., who is currently doing time in federal prison.
The Kelly Report consists of essays by gun control supporters, followed by a long list of gun control legislation and other efforts they support. Anti-gun activist groups represented in the “report” include Bloomberg’s Mayors Against Illegal Guns, Bloomberg’s Everytown for Gun Safety, the Brady Campaign, the Educational Fund to End Gun Violence, the Law Center to Prevent Gun Violence, and Americans for Responsible Solutions.
The “report” advocates two gun control restrictions intended to achieve universal gun registration incrementally. They are “universal” background checks, a Bloomberg priority, and repealing the law that limits the amount of time that the FBI can retain records on people who pass background checks to buy guns. Kelly also calls for gun registration outright.
The report also advocates a federal “assault weapon” and “large” magazine ban more severe than the one in effect between 1994 and 2004, gun owner licensing, repealing Stand Your Ground laws, opposing national Right-to-Carry reciprocity, empowering the Consumer Products Safety Commission to regulate the manufacture of firearms, prohibiting unlicensed and mail order ammunition sales, reporting people who purchase 1,000 or more rounds, removing restrictions on public access to BATFE firearm trace data, repealing the federal law that prohibits frivolous lawsuits designed to bankrupt the firearm industry, requiring “ballistic fingerprinting,” pursuing “smart” gun technologies, and using taxpayer funds to pay for “research” that promotes gun control.
There has also been a further development and, no, we are not making this up. On Monday, even though children are already prohibited from buying firearms at retail under federal law and the laws of most states, Kelly introduced H.R. 5093, the Children’s Firearm Marketing Safety Act. This legislation would direct the Federal Trade Commission to prohibit the use of cartoon characters to market guns to children, to prohibit the manufacturing of guns in colors designed to appeal to children, and other such nonsense. As UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh points out, the cartoon character ban would be unconstitutional and the color ban might be as well.
Regardless of who’s behind the “Kelly Report,” it and Kelly’s cartoon character bill remind us of how gun control supporters think and what they intend to do, once they have the votes in Congress and the state legislatures. And that reminds us of what we have to in the voting booth on Election Day.
