East Central Reporter

Gubernatorial candidate Sen. Darren Bailey (R-Louisville) has called for a special legislative session to address crime in the state.

“The suffering, the loss, and the pain (are) nightmarish and ongoing, and it doesn’t have to be this way,” he said in a July 7 press conference, according to CIProud.com. “I am calling for a special legislative session to take action to stop the mayhem in our streets.”

The press conference came three days after the shooting at the Highland Park Fourth of July parade in which seven people were killed. Police say Robert Crimo III, 21, confessed to being the gunman. 

During the special legislative session, Bailey said he would create a multi-stakeholder group consisting of doctors, first responders, churches, patients, home caregivers and teachers to “identify the gaps that these tormented people are falling through and find solutions.”

“We must do whatever it takes to address the breakdown in mental health, particularly among isolated young men, which was made immeasurably worse during Pritzker’s lockdowns,” he said.

While many like Bailey call for mental health services to combat mass shootings, Joel Dovskin, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of Arizona College of Medicine, said to the American Psychological Association (APA) that a lot of those calls could be “counterproductive” and “harmful.”

“The politicians have an unfortunate tendency to react to what is most publicized and also to react to anecdotes as opposed to solid research and we don't know enough to really guide public policy, so stigma, which is sort of a collection of myths and stereotypes, tends to guide public policy far too much and, as I said, much of it is incorrect,” Dovskin said in an APA Q&A. “So, we end up with policies that people tout as saying ‘we did something’ but, in fact, it's either not helpful or in some cases counterproductive. And we’d be far better off as a country if instead of relying on stigma people were encouraging really good research about how to reduce gun violence rather than just react to these extreme cases and the stigma and myths of stereotypes.”

In February, Bailey was part of a group of senators who proposed a funding package that aimed to to support police, keep violent offenders off of the street, help stop the flow of illegal guns to criminals, take action against carjacking, provide mental health treatment to detainees, and repeal the bail provisions of the SAFE-T Act.

“We shouldn’t be defunding police,” he said. “We need more support to defend our police by providing officers and prosecutors the tools they need to get violent criminals off the streets and out of our communities. If this current administration has done anything, it has taken the ‘public’ out of public safety and out of taxpayer’s hands through an atrocious anti-police packaged called the ‘SAFE-T Act.’ Because of that, there is an average 20% vacancy rate in law enforcement positions across our state and Chicago is on track to lose 900 officers.”

After the July Fourth shooting, Bailey told the community in a video to “move on” to celebrate their freedoms. However, he later apologized for his words.

In the aftermath of the Highland Park shooting, Bailey also faced criticism for raffling an AR-15 in a 2019 campaign event.

NBC News reported that a 2019 video on the senator's campaign Facebook page shows him, as a state representative, in front of a drum to pick a name for the winner of the AR-15 in question.

“As promised, we have held a raffle for an AR-15, a Smith & Wesson, and I have possession of that,” he said in a video. 

This isn't the only time Bailey has raffled off guns as part of his campaigns.