I am 17 years old. That makes me a Millennial Generation Z. And although a knee-jerk reaction may be that this article is about gun control, it isn’t. This article is about the U.S. Congress’ not obeying the clear majority will of “We…the people” on a very important issue: Guns in the hands of the mentally ill.
With 15 students dead in the Parkland, Fla. school shooting, I’m amazed by the lack of agreement in the media and in politics. The National Rifle Association (NRA) is a broken record, seemingly unable to grasp the definitional concept of a “well-regulated” militia in the U.S. Constitution. And others think we magically can eliminate the 300 Million guns owned by Americans. I did a random poll of many of my peers, and none thought guns should be outlawed. In fact, the only area with 100% agreement was mental illness: Any person with a diagnosis of mental illness on their medical or school records should not own a gun. Period. Then, when I checked the polls over the past three years, they have consistently ranged between 67% to 89% of Americans in agreement for Congress to take action to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill.
So imagine my surprise when I learned that a few days after Donald Trump took office as president, an out-of-touch 88-year old Texas Republican congressman, Sam Johnson, introduced H.J. Resolution 40, which was rammed through the supposed “pro-life” Republican Congress (usually slow as molasses!), and signed into law by Trump February 28, 2017…only a month after he took office! HJRes40 discontinues the process whereby the U.S. Social Security Administration was automatically sending the names of Mental Disability payment recipients to the National Instant Gun Background Check System, thereby removing about 75,000 known names and stopping any future names from being added to the gun system. Representative Sam Johnson received tens of thousands of dollars from the NRA to earn their grade of “A” for his support, and we now know Trump received record donations from the NRA.
Mental Illness was clearly a factor in all of the following killings: 20 kids at Sandy Hook, Conn.; nine at Emmanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church, S.C.; three at Fort Hood, Texas; six dead at Northern Illinois University. By the way, for those with an illogical fear of Muslims, all of the above killings were done by Caucasians who had church affiliations, which makes me wonder why the media has failed to coin the phrase “Christian Terrorist,” because let’s face it, if any of those shooters had been Muslim, you can bet your last dollar we’d all know about that. But, I digress.
Again, this article is not about gun control. It’s about democracy, and how our democratic republic is in jeopardy when Congress blatantly ignores the clear will of the people. Ignoring the people is not an America that is great again. It’s an America that will slip into totalitarianism like most former great societies and empires of the past 5,000 years. As teens, we are terrified our majority opinions will be railroaded by the narrow and myopic ideology of old, white, out-of-touch wealthy men, the Republican Congress. Where will it end?
—Jackie LaVia, senior East Aurora High School
