USA Today - 09.08.2019

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OPINION

JEFF KOTERBA/OMAHA WORLD-HERALD/POLITICALCARTOONS.COM

We are all grieving the loss of my

spirited, introspective, beautiful cous-

in Saoirse Kennedy Hill. She died too

soon, at the age of 22, but we are left

with her brave words and spirit. She

was open about her struggles with

mental illness even as a teenager — im-

ploring the faculty and students at her

school to learn how to tell the truth

about these illnesses and the impact on

their lives, because silence “leaves peo-

ple feeling even more alone.”

To prove her point, in a school news-

paper story Saoirse shared that she had

been treated for depression and hospi-

talized after a suicide attempt. She

didn’t do this for shock value, but rather

to openly tell her story in the hope it

would help others do the same. We

were all so proud of her.

“No one seems to know how to talk

about mental illness,” she wrote. And

Saoirse knew all too well that in the rare

moments when she and others tried to

talk about it, they got reactions that

made them fearful of being open again:

“If someone confides in you, try not to

say, ‘It’s all in your mind,’ or ‘Lighten

up,’ or, my personal favorite, ‘Happi-

ness is a choice.’ No, it’s really not.”

It was only an hour or two after her

death was announced that I started

seeing stories about how this is the

“Kennedy curse.” That offends me, and

it would have offended Saoirse.

What she knew, and wanted every-

one else to know, is that the Kennedy

family is, in many ways, painfully typ-

ical. We have an unsurprising inci-

dence of mental illness and addiction.

Our illnesses are no different than any-

one else’s, and our tragic losses to them

have not been so out of the ordinary.

We have a big family. A lot of kids

had a lot more kids. But mostly we are a

more public family than most, under

the eye of the media. Consequently, we

are less able to hide these struggles

than others.

Honestly, that’s a good thing. Hiding

these struggles does not work; too

many people live in isolated shame and

even die, untreated or unsupported in

treatment, because of it. Saoirse came

to understand that much earlier in life

than I did. And since it is her generation

that is at the highest risk for these ill-

nesses, and the premature death they

can cause, Saoirse was my hero for put-

ting herself and her story out there.

Saoirse wanted to be part of the first

generation to grow up truly confronting

the discrimination against these ill-

nesses. “I have experienced a lot of stig-

ma surrounding mental health,” she

admitted, but “as students, we have the

power to end that immediately.”

Saoirse also wanted to make sure

mental illnesses got the same attention

and respect — in treatment, in research

dollars, in public empathy — as dis-

eases of other organs. “People talk

about cancer freely; why is it so difficult

to discuss the effects of depression, bi-

polar, anxiety, or schizophrenic disor-

ders?” she wanted to know.

She was asking the right questions.

She was trying so hard to find answers.

I am proud Saoirse was able to be

open. And I know her message will out-

live her. We can all take a lesson from

Saoirse. Feel what she felt. Do whatever

you can to stop the isolation, the dis-

crimination and the devastating lack of

acknowledgment that too often leadto

tragedy. Families across the nation are

suffering and losing loved ones every

day — not just the Kennedys.

Former Rep. Patrick J. Kennedy,

founder of The Kennedy Forum, was

lead sponsor of the Mental Health Par-

ity and Addiction Equity Act of 2008

and served on the President’s Commis-

sion on Combating Drug Addiction and

the Opioid Crisis. He is co-author of “A

Common Struggle: A Personal Journey

through the Past and Future of Mental

Illness and Addiction,” with Stephen

Fried.

My cousin was brave

about mental illness

Saoirse knew that hiding

struggles doesn’t work

Patrick J. Kennedy

Funeral program in Centerville,

Massachusetts, on Monday.

DAVID L. RYAN/POOL

YOUR SAY

When I heard of the mass shooting by
a white nationalist in El Paso, Texas, a
place where I once worked and studied,
I experienced many emotions, but I’m
stuck on rage.
I’m enraged by white nationalists
who claim that their inhuman acts are in
service of protecting America for white
people. They are attacking and killing
people of color and have the nerve to say

that they do so on my behalf. White peo-

ple, what are we going to do about this?

I’m channeling my rage into respon-

sibility. I invite fellow white people to

join. I commit to working with people to

dismantle racism, whether it expresses

itself in the form of a hand holding a gun

or a hand signing an executive order.

It’s time to speak out in all spaces, to

build organizations to combat racism,

and to deny white nationalism its base.

Lee Gargagliano

Oakland, Calif.

Deny white nationalism its base

LETTERS

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For a prime example of how “red
flag” laws might stop some mass shoot-
ings, consider the savagery of gunman
Nikolas Cruz in Parkland, Florida.
Dozens of threatening signals were
flashing about the once-expelled high
school student who would later confess
to gunning down 17 students and adults
at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High
School last year. One blatant tipoff: a
YouTube posting by a “nikolas cruz”
vowing “to be a professional school
shooter.” No one did anything.
Red flag laws allow a court to issue
an extreme-risk protection order to
temporarily confiscate firearms from
people deemed a grave risk to them-
selves or others. A judge acts only after
careful, due process consideration.
Since the Parkland shootings, Flori-
da and 11 other states quickly embraced
such laws. (In all, 17 states now have
them.) Just one day after the law took
effect in Vermont, a judge used it to
block gun purchases by an 18-year-old
man accused of keeping a diary he ti-
tled “Journal of an Active Shooter” and
making plans to kill a record number of
people at a local high school.
Emerging evidence suggests that
such laws, if they existed in Ohio and
Texas, might have made a difference in
last weekend’s shootings in Dayton and
El Paso:
zDayton gunman Connor Betts, 24,
had a history of threatening violence
against girlfriends and, years back,
compiled a “rape” and “hit” list of po-
tential victims, former classmates said.
A red flag law like the one Republican
Gov. Mike DeWine now says he wants
might have separated Betts from the
AR-15-style firearm he used to slaugh-
ter nine people.
zWeeks before the El Paso shooting,
according to CNN, the mother of al-
leged gunman Patrick Crusius, 21,
called police about her concerns that
her son owned an “AK” type weapon. If

Texas had a red flag law, police could

have advised her about a legal pathway

for having that gun taken away.

Research has shown that extreme-

risk protective orders could also have a

direct bearing on reducing suicides,

which made up more than half of

America’s record-high number of near-

ly 40,000 gun deaths in 2017.

Red flag laws are far from a panacea.

There were no signals before Stephen

Paddock set up a sniper’s nest in a Las

Vegas high-rise in 2017, killing 58 peo-

ple and himself in the deadliest mass

shooting in modern U.S. history.

Even so, providing federal money to

help states implement these laws — a

concept with expressed support from

President Donald Trump, Sen. Lindsey

Graham of South Carolina and other

leading Republicans — would be a bi-

partisan baby step toward the broader

types of changes needed, such as uni-

versal background checks and bans on

semiautomatic assault weapons and

high-capacity magazines.

Even a modest change on protection

orders is worth doing. It would still con-

stitute the toughest gun law by Con-

gress in years. It would usefully shatter

the NRA’saura of invincibility. And it

just might save lives.

TODAY'S DEBATE: PROTECTION ORDERS

Our view: ‘Red flag’ laws can

help stop unhinged shooters

Protest across from the White House

on Tuesday.SHAWN THEW/EPA-EFE

There are rarely easy answers in
sound public policy, but tragedies often
drive badanswers. Such is the case
with “red flag” laws, which offend our
rights, violate fundamental assump-
tions about a person’s innocenceand
create new opportunities for abuse.
Red flag laws are simply bad policy.
In Connecticut, in at least one-thirdof
confiscation cases where the gun own-
er eventually contests the order, it is
overturned. Many people who have
their property seized never get it back,
because petitioning the government for
the return of firearms requires an ex-
pensive lawyer. Andcriminal law can
disproportionately affect the poor —
the very same people most likelyto be
violently victimized.
These red flag proposals wouldn’t be
imposed in an otherwise perfect coun-
try. They would be imposed in a nation
where many law enforcement agencies
have become extraordinarily
militarized. In one case, for example,
someone was killed during enforce-
ment of a red flag order.
Red flag laws stand for the proposi-

tion that people can have their rights

and property taken from them on the

basis of mere allegations. No reason-

able suspicion needed. And even if you

don’t believe the right to keep and bear

arms exists at all, or it is of little impor-

tance to you, do you really want this

government to extend a relaxed notion

of seizure and inverted due process to

other areas of law? Because history

shows it will.

Due process is a fundamental cor-

nerstone of American law. Except when

it comes to your right to competently

defend yourself, apparently. “Take the

guns first, go through due process sec-

ond,” as our president once quipped, is

not due process. It is over-due process.

I have no doubt that people on the

other side of this issue genuinely want

to “do something.” What I doubt is that

they have given due consideration to

the tremendous costs red flag laws im-

pose on our society, communitiesand

civil liberties.

Matthew Larosiere is the director of

legal policy for the Firearms Policy

Coalitionand a senior contributor to

Young Voices.

Opposing view:Red flag laws

violate rights to due process

Matthew Larosiere

Toni Morrison, the first African-

American woman to win the Nobel Prize

for Literature, died on Monday at age

88.

Words can unite. Words can divide.

Words can heal. But Toni Morrison’s

unique ability to magically weave words

that inspire was a genuine gift.

The pen is indeed mightier than the

sword. Imagine if we chose only virtu-

ous words, there would be no need for a

sword. Without a doubt, Morrison’s

arousing and powerful words will be her

everlasting legacy.

JoAnn Lee Frank

Clearwater, Fla.

Morrison’s powerful words are her legacy

LETTERS

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