Teenagers: we need your help!!

To all School kids.

This is to all High School kids, but also middle and elementary kids.  If you haven’t graduated from High School yet, this is for you.

We are all still reeling-and crying- from the many shootings of your classmates and friends, this February 2018. I’m not talking just about Parkland, Fl. That’s just the latest of a horrific number of shootings in such a short amount of time.

This year, hundreds of people have been shot and killed by monsters with assault weapons. Almost all of their targets have been YOU. Your friends. The girls who sit next to you in class. The boys on the football team. The nerds and geeks, the cool kids, your siblings. You are targets for anyone with a gripe and a gun.

Your legislators: State Representatives, Senators, Congressmen, etc....always say the person who kills you is ‘mentally ill’. Sometimes he is. Most of the time he is NOT at all mentally ill. Nikolas Cruz planned the murder of you with meticulous care.  So did Adam Lanza, Dylan Roof, all the monsters who murder.  Cruz was smart, not ill. It takes a lot of smart thinking to pull the fire alarm. This got you out of your classrooms where he could shoot you at will. He took great care to hit as many of you as he could. Then he hid amongst you to escape, pretending he was one of you. You were scared. You were crying. You didn’t know if you were ever going to see your family again. He was smirking, laughing, and right in your midst.

Then he went to get something to eat. Is this the workings of someone who is mentally ill?

No.

He did it for FUN. Just like the others. For FUN. To see you scream in terror and die in agony.

The Florida legislators, when they heard you were coming to Tallahassee to ask them to fix this horrible problem, IMMEDIATELY made a decision: that they weren’t going to listen to you.

Why?

They don’t GIVE A DAMN ABOUT YOU. You’re a kid. To them, you're merely a self centered, entitled, vain, self absorbed, smart phone enthralled kid.   You’re nothing to them. Nothing.

They don’t give a damn that you are dying. They don’t give a damn that someone has the ability to go and shoot you with assault weapons and handguns for no reason other than he’s enjoying it.   

They don’t give a damn about you.

All politicians have one goal in mind: to keep their well-paid position. That means getting re-elected. It takes money, a lot of it, to run an election campaign. The National Rifle Association ‘donates’ billions of dollars to every politician who says he or she is pro-gun.

The NRA gets its money from rich men, from gun and ammunition manufacturers, from gun nuts who love guns more than  the life of an innocent person.

The NRA has ‘lobbyists’ that spend every day in the capitol of your state, bribing your  legislators to vote against gun control. The pitch is simple:  we will pay you to vote against any form of gun control. That’s it. It’s just that simple.

Think of this: how many kids in your school have parents who are lawmakers, or are CEO’s, Congressmen or senators?

Can’t think of a one, can you?  Why?

They don’t send their kids to your school.

They don’t want their kids to mingle with the likes of YOU. They send their kids to a private school, one that probably has a really good security guard. Their kids don’t ride the bus. They don’t sit in your classrooms.
They don’t want THEIR kids shot dead.

By the way, the taxes your parents pay also pay for those kids to go to a private school. Legislators and politicians (like Donald Trump) have a way of getting out of paying taxes. They’re rich, and can afford a lawyer who get them out of taxes. One very rich woman, Leona Helmsley, when asked why she didn’t pay taxes, said, “Only the little people pay taxes.” 

You, my friend, are one of the ‘little people’.

You’re just a peasant.  You mean NOTHING to them.

In fact, all of us are nothing to them. They hate us. They are owned by the very, very rich, who pay them to make laws that keep the rich rich and the poor poor. Just look at the recent ‘tax reform’ bill Trump signed into law. It will make the rich richer and everyone else poorer. Do you eat a school lunch? That’s one thing that is going to go away. That’s just one.

The rich have made it so that the middle class (which no longer exists in any numbers) and the poor eat the entire tax pie.

The minute someone shoots up a bunch of you, or people at a concert, or in a movie, or in church, the NRA and the politicians start talking. “It’s too soon to talk about gun control.” Today, Wayne LaPiere, head of the NRA is BLAMING YOU for trying to get assault weapons off the street. He is screaming that you want to 'eradicate the Second Amendment". The NRA IMMEDIATELY went into 'damage control mode'.

Why?
The NRA wants to divert your attention. It wants you to be confused. It wants you to 'think about the controversy, consider how dangerous it is to  tamper with the Second Amendment. Most of it, it wants you to FORGET.

They know you’re going to scream and bitch, but in a few days, you will forget about gun control. You have a life, and life has a way of concentrating your attention elsewhere.

They count on it, and it works.

Of course, the families who lose a kid, a parent, a friend, etc, don’t ever forget. But they’re NOTHING, they are like dog shit to the legislators and politicians.

Let me warn you kids.

As long as the politicians refuse to ban assault weapons, you are going to continue being murdered.

Right now there is nothing you can do. They will ignore your demonstrations. You are nothing to them.

But in a few years, you will be something to them.

You will be a voter. Only then will you become something more than just a dumbass kid. They want something from you. That is: your vote. They will make all sorts of promises to you. They lie.

There’s a saying, “How can you tell when a politician is lying? When is lips are moving.”

 So they will tell you whatever it is you want to hear: we’re going to fund schools. We’re going to fix the highways. We’re going to do this do that (but NEVER will they say, we’re going to ban assault weapons.)

The NRA pays them good money to avoid that issue.

Once they’re re-elected, all those promises will be forgotten. Just like your deaths.

They say “it’s not fair to law abiding gun owners to take away their assault weapons.”

What they don’t say is “But we are perfectly happy to see kids get their heads blown off by someone using one.”

To them, what is fair is that you die.

Hear them deflect the issue. You said to Trump, ban assault weapons. What did he say today? (21 Feb 18)? “More emphasis on treating the mentally ill.” “More ‘study’ of background checks.”  Not once did the words ‘assault weapon” cross his lips.  I screamed at the TV: IT”S THE GUNS, STUPID!

He will NEVER go against the wishes of the NRA. He and his party that holds both the House and the Senate will let you demonstrate all you want, but will never lift a finger to getting rid of assault weapons.

About fifteen years ago, someone in Australia killed a bunch of people with an assault weapon. The Australian government banned all assault and semi–automatics weapons. They bought back all the guns (people can still own single shot rifles and shotguns), and do you know how many mass shootings they’ve had since?

NONE. ZIP. ZERO.

And all the Australian men still have their balls, and the world didn’t end.

We want assault weapons off the streets.  We ache every time someone is murdered by someone using a gun. We especially hurt when the murdered one is one of you, a young person with all the future ahead of him or her, and then it’s taken away by someone exercising his Second Amendment right to own an assault weapon.

So.

Please.

Young man, young woman, young trans, queer, gay, straight, undecided, black, white, brown, yellow, red, biracial, it doesn’t matter what you are.

Please.

We need your help.

We adults...people like me and your parents, are helpless. We can’t do it by ourselves. We have tried, trust me. The rich plutocrats, the NRA and their paid for politicians in Washington D.C. ignore us. They have cheated their way into power and intend to keep it forever. The presidential election was stolen (Clinton had 2 million more votes) by paying off the electoral college and they will do it again.

Through a lot of underhanded cheating, the GOP is in charge and has no intention WHATSOEVER of doing anything to stop you from being murdered.

Kids, it’s up to you. You must register to vote at the first opportunity (I think the voting age in most states is 18 but I may be mistaken).

Then you must use that vote.

VOTE!

VOTE THESE GREEDY, UNCARING BASTARDS OUT OF OFFICE.

TOGETHER, with your vote and mine, we can get these people who abdicate morality, who don’t care if you die, out of office.

The one thing we have is our numbers. The politicians are few. We are many and it is time we put our numbers against their bias, their greed, their hatred for us. They want us to fight amongst ourselves. They want us to kill each other. Don’t think those attacks on David Hogg weren’t planned. What the GOP and the NRA are doing is nothing short of propaganda intended to divide us.

We need your young voices to be heard. We need you to help us get assault weapons off the street.

When you can, VOTE.

Vote against any one of them who takes money from the NRA. Vote against any politician or legislator who doesn’t sponsor or back an assault weapons ban, any form of gun control.

That’s the only way you’re going to be able to stop the bloodshed.

You have the internet and media smarts that we old farts don’t. I personally have no idea how to text. I don’t have a smart phone. I need a teenager to fix my computer when it effs up.

You have the media savvy and internet power. Soon you will also have the power to vote. It’s not in your hands, yet. It will be soon.

If you want to live a full life, without having to worry about being blown away with an AR-15, or an AK-47, you have to make sure that the people in office have banned them.

I will be marching with you on March 24. I might be old, but I am sick and tired of children and teens being murdered and of the politicians who don’t give a damn about you. Or me. Or anyone who isn’t a rich man  or the NRA.

In the meantime, kids, be situational aware.

If you see something, say something. If someone you know says they’re going to shoot up a school, tell someone! It’s not snitching. Make them listen! Tell a cop, your parents, your principal, tell someone. You’re not snitching. You’re trying to stay alive.

Keep your eyes and ears open.  Be careful. Look out for each other. Don’t bully or allow a bully to hurt any of you. Your school may be next.