* From the US Surgeon General’s advisory entitled “Firearm violence in America is a public health crisis”…

A Surgeon General’s Advisory is a public statement that calls the American people’s attention to an urgent public health issue. Advisories are reserved for significant public health challenges that require the nation’s immediate awareness and action.

* AP…

The U.S. surgeon general on Tuesday declared gun violence a public health crisis, driven by the fast-growing number of injuries and deaths involving firearms in the country.

The advisory issued by Dr. Vivek Murthy, the nation’s top doctor, came as the U.S. grappled with another summer weekend marked by mass shootings that left dozens of people dead or wounded.

“People want to be able to walk through their neighborhoods and be safe,” Murthy told The Associated Press in a phone interview. “America should be a place where all of us can go to school, go to work, go to the supermarket, go to our house of worship, without having to worry that that’s going to put our life at risk.”

To drive down gun deaths, Murthy calls on the U.S. to ban “assault weapons and large-capacity magazines for civilian use,” introduce universal background checks for purchasing guns, regulate the industry, pass laws that would restrict their use in public spaces and penalize people who fail to safely store their weapons.

None of those suggestions can be implemented nationwide without legislation passed by Congress, which typically recoils at gun control measures. Some state legislatures, however, have enacted or may consider some of the surgeon general’s proposals.

* Illinois’ very own…

Biden’s surgeon general declaring firearms as a “public health emergency” is a backdoor attempt to strip away the American peoples’ 2nd Amendment rights. I will work to stop Biden’s attack on our Constitutional rights! https://t.co/TM7BfKHseZ

— Rep. Mary Miller (@RepMaryMiller) June 27, 2024

Um, he declared gun violence a public health crisis via an advisory.

* Flashback to 2021, when Gov. Pritzker declared gun violence to be a public health crisis…

Joined by legislators, stakeholders, and community leaders, Governor JB Pritzker today declared gun violence a public health crisis and announced support for a $250 million state investment over the next three years to implement the Reimagine Public Safety plan, a data-driven and community-based violence prevention initiative.

Stakeholders have been a driving force behind the plan to coordinate and maximize hundreds of millions of dollars in future funding. The state will begin issuing Notices of Funding Opportunities for qualified organizations before the end of 2021 with a goal of enabling work to be well underway before the summer of 2022.

“Every neighborhood and every home deserve to be free from violence, and the State of Illinois is making an unprecedented statewide investment in the pursuit of violence reduction through the Reimagine Public Safety Act,” said Governor JB Pritzker. “Reimagine Public Safety is an evidence-based and data driven approach focusing on violence prevention, youth development, and the provision of trauma-based services. And we are putting an unprecedented amount of dollars - $250 million - on the ground to see it through.”

* Pritzker was asked this week what good he thought the Surgeon General’s public health crisis announcement would do…

Well, I’m proud that Illinois has led the way in this regard. I do think it’s important to recognize that this is an area where we need to put new emphasis.

Remember, I think one of the reasons for a declaration like this is to remind people that early intervention, just like with health care, early intervention, what do we say? ‘An ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure.’ That is true also, when it comes to gun violence.

Making sure that we’re making the proper investments early into communities where we know there is a problem with violence. Making sure that we’re deterring people from getting engaged in things that they shouldn’t, by providing jobs, by making sure we have violence intervention programs that are funded.

I would just point to one other thing. You may recall that back in, I think it was 2020 or 2019 there was a study released by Northwestern University that showed that one of the reasons for the uptick, significant rise in crime in Chicago, and across the country, but they were talking particularly about Illinois and Chicago, was the disinvestment under the prior administration. I’m talking about the administration of Illinois, from those early intervention programs in those communities. The fact that we had no budget for two years, many of those violence interruption interruption programs actually had to close. And then you saw some of the results of that with the rise in violent crime across the city.

So I think that’s something to keep in mind as the Surgeon General has made his declaration and as we move forward in the kinds of programs and investments that we make in the state of Illinois.