Canary in a Coal Mine | Young, Hoping + Coping

     Children are often the first to succumb to toxic cultural conditions. Look around, it’s not hard to see that for some, the song is over before it’s barely begun.
    In this connection, much has been made of adolescent suicide, as should be. Confirmed reporting of data on causes of death lags well behind real time. We know that, in 2014:

425 10-14-year-olds died by suicide

1,837 15-19-year-olds died by suicide

3,253 20-24-year-olds died by suicide

Including 20-24-year-olds is an artifact of the first wave of reporting in which, other than 10-14-year-olds, the numbers are often released in 10-year groupings—15-24-year-olds, 25-34-year-olds, and so on. A lot of us are accustomed to thinking of teen suicide differently than young adult suicide, much as we’re accustomed to think differently about 24-year-olds and 15-year-olds giving birth. But maybe it’s useful to consider the lives of people in the five years after their teens. Most of us don't think typical 24-year-olds have much in common with typical 15-year-olds, but many 24-year-olds are still within reach of help from people they knew and trusted when they were 15 (as well as people they might have trusted at 15, had they known them).
    In any event, in 2014, the rate of suicides spiked from about nine per 100,000 15-19-year-olds to about 14 per 100,000 20-24-year-olds. That spike is typical of recent years. For people endeavoring to raise adults, this is sad news.
    The vulnerability of American children and adolescents is measured in more ways than suicide. For example, the Center for Disease Control and Prevention conducts longterm Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance that does more or less what it sounds like: The YRBS studies risky behavior in America’s student population. These indicators suggest that, in general, things are not as good as we wish, and not bad as we fear.

    Here’s a sampling from the High School Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance 2015 Results:

    If you’ve been told things are getting worse all the time, the data show that is not true. Much of the conduct measured in the CDC’s Youth Risk Behavior Surveillance is trending less risky compared to the peak between 1991 and 2015. Any-is-too-many, yes…but let’s give credit where credit is due. In many ways, the current crop of high schoolers are doing better than, or about as well as, the generation before them at the same age.
    Having said that, we return to the any-is-too-many theme. Kids in trouble are in as much trouble as kids in trouble ever were. Their families suffer the same sort of distress all distressed families always suffer.
    When teenagers take risks in reaction to real life stress—self-medicating against pain, for instance, or non-suicidal self harm to deflect pain—they are trying to do what people have always tried to do. They are trying to cope.

BUY RAISING ADULTS

SUBSCRIBE TO FRAGMENTS FROM RAISING ADULTS

Shots Fired or the Silence of the Lambs

Imagine a shooting in a crowded place where no one hears the gun fire...where one person after another falls wounded or dead because the firearm is all but silent.

Here are the Members of Congress who intend to rip this scenario from your imagination to play out in your local dance club, the lobby of your airport or church, along the margins of your local ball-field, in a grade school classroom, and then another, maybe a third before anyone notices ("I wonder why those children are screaming.... Oh, well, now it stopped").

These Members of Congress are the sponsors of the Hearing Protection Act of 2017, ISYN—because the worst thing about shootings is the noise, right?

115th CONGRESS 1st Session

H. R. 367

To provide that silencers be treated the same as long guns.

---

IN THE HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES

January 9, 2017

        Mr. Duncan of South Carolina (for himself, Mr. Carter of Texas, Mr. Gene Green of Texas, Mr. Austin Scott of Georgia, Mr. Biggs, Mr. Gosar, Mr. Hudson, Mr. LaMalfa, Mr. Harris, Mr. Westerman, Mr. Olson, Mr. Chaffetz, Mr. Hensarling, Mr. Carter of Georgia, Mr. Labrador, Mr. Brooks of Alabama, Mr. Smith of Texas, Mr. Bishop of Utah, Mr. Brat, Mr. Abraham, Mr. Palmer, Mrs. Love, Mr. Bridenstine, Mr. Stewart, Mr. Marshall, Mr. Emmer, Mr. Ratcliffe, Mr. Jody B. Hice of Georgia, Mr. Buck, Mr. Weber of Texas, Mr. Messer, Mr. Mooney of West Virginia, Mr. DeSantis, Mr. Newhouse, Mr. Smith of Missouri, Mr. Graves of Georgia, Mr. Lamborn, Mr. Wenstrup, Mr. Rogers of Alabama, Mr. DesJarlais, Mr. Massie, Mr. King of Iowa, Mr. Gohmert, and Mr. Yoder) introduced the following bill; which was referred to the Committee on Ways and Means, and in addition to the Committee on the Judiciary, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned

---

A BILL

To provide that silencers be treated the same as long guns.
Be it enacted by the Senate and House of Representatives of the United States of America in Congress assembled, SECTION 1. SHORT TITLE.This Act may be cited as the “Hearing Protection Act of 2017”.
SEC. 2. EQUAL TREATMENT OF SILENCERS AND FIREARMS.(a) In General.—Section 5845(a) of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by striking “(7) any silencer” and all that follows through “; and (8)” and inserting “; and (7)”.
(b) Effective Date.—
(1) IN GENERAL.—Except as otherwise provided in this subsection, the amendment made by this section shall take effect on the date of the enactment of this Act.
(2) TRANSFERS.—In the case of the tax imposed by section 5811 of such Code, the amendment made by this section shall apply with respect to transfers after October 22, 2015.
SEC. 3. TREATMENT OF CERTAIN SILENCERS.Section 5841 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986 is amended by adding at the end the following:
“(f) Firearm Silencers.—A person acquiring or possessing a firearm silencer in accordance with Chapter 44 of title 18, United States Code, shall be treated as meeting any registration and licensing requirements of the National Firearms Act (as in effect on the day before the date of the enactment of this subsection) with respect to such silencer.”.
SEC. 4. PREEMPTION OF CERTAIN STATE LAWS IN RELATION TO FIREARM SILENCERS.Section 927 of title 18, United States Code, is amended by adding at the end the following: “Notwithstanding the preceding sentence, a law of a State or a political subdivision of a State that, as a condition of lawfully making, transferring, using, possessing, or transporting a firearm silencer in or affecting interstate or foreign commerce, imposes a tax on any such conduct, or a marking, recordkeeping or registration requirement with respect to the firearm silencer, shall have no force or effect.”. 

If it becomes law, the Hearing Protection Act of 2017 will make it illegal for any state or local jurisdiction to regulate or record the manufacture, transport, sale, possession, or use of silencers. 

So much for states rights, right?

Who, exactly, does this serve?

Look again at the list of sponsors. See anyone whose name you recognize? Anything you'd like to tell them? [h/t Dana Milbank]

Did She Jump? | Learning to ask a different question

For a long time, when hurting, at-risk kids and parents came to me for help, I wanted to know—the judge in me wanted to know—Did she jump or was she pushed? Things like that matter to the judge. How else can he assign blame? But over time, broken and battered myself, compassion posed a new question. Compassion asks: Does it matter how it happened? She’s broken. What now?

Here is my hope for all of us—you, me, our children, our children’s children: Acknowledging that things are seldom as they should be, I hope we’ll be able to look at things as they are and ask, What Now?

from Raising Adults by Jim Hancock

---

BUY RAISING ADULTS

SUBSCRIBE TO FRAGMENTS FROM RAISING ADULTS

Anything + Everything | Who is my neighbor?

I've been thinking a lot about folks who say, "We will do anything to get others into heaven," while doing everything to keep them out of the country.

Perhaps this is one of those domains in which it is hard to be a Christian. I hesitate to put words in the mouth of G.K. Chesterton—even his own words—but I keep recalling his line: "The Christian ideal has not been tried and found wanting; it has been found difficult and left untried." [1]

Mr. Chesterton's difficult Christian ideal included, in 1910, religious practitioners who didn't manage to live up to the promise, in part because, he wrote, "the princes conquered the saints." And then: 

....My point is that the world did not tire of the church’s ideal, but of its reality. Monasteries were impugned not for the chastity of monks, but for the unchastity of monks. Christianity was unpopular not because of the humility, but of the arrogance of Christians. [2]

In a similar way, church is the last place some of my friends would look for a Christian—but, then, they're not at all clear where, or when, or why, they would look for a Christian. They're glad, as far as it goes, if they hear that a church hosts a feeding program, or gets involved in flood relief, or whatever. But they think of such gestures as table stakes for an operation that benefits from local infrastructure without sharing the tax burden. As long as nothing goes terribly wrong at a local church, they're content to keep their distance and be left well enough alone. Beyond hearsay, these friends are not particularly clear about who constitutes the membership of these churches, or what draws and binds the members together. 

As long as we're in the way back machine, I'll call up an address to Christians from M.K. Gandhi, quoted in 1930 by his good friend, Charlie Andrews:

When I began as a prayerful student to study Christian literature in South Africa in 1893, I asked myself again and again, 'Is this Christianity?' And I could only say, 'No, no. Certainly this that I see is not Christianity.' And the deepest in me tells me that I was right; for it was unworthy of Jesus and untrue to the Sermon on the Mount.....In spite of your belief in the greatness of Western civilization, and in spite of your pride in all your achievements, I plead with you to exercise humility. I ask you to leave some little room for honest doubt. Let us simply each one live our life; and if ours is the right life, where is the cause for hurry? It will react of itself. By all means drink deep of the fountains that are given to you in the Sermon on the Mount; but then you will have to take up sackcloth and ashes also with regard to failure to perform that which is taught in Christ's Sermon. For the teaching of the Sermon was meant for each and every one of us. You cannot serve both God and Mammon.... [3]

I think it's difficult to refute Mr. Gandhi on this point. I think we are — all of us who propose to know anything about Jesus — responsible to answer a question from Jesus recorded by Luke:

On one occasion an expert in the law stood up to test Jesus. “Teacher,” he asked, “what must I do to inherit eternal life?”  

“What is written in the Law?” he replied. “How do you read it?”

There's the question: "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" This, apparently, is something Jesus wants to know.

He answered, “‘Love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your strength and with all your mind’ ; and, ‘Love your neighbor as yourself.’”

“You have answered correctly,” Jesus replied. “Do this and you will live.” 

But he wanted to justify himself, so he asked Jesus, “And who is my neighbor?”  

In reply Jesus said: “A man was going down from Jerusalem to Jericho, when he was attacked by robbers. They stripped him of his clothes, beat him and went away, leaving him half dead. A priest happened to be going down the same road, and when he saw the man, he passed by on the other side. So too, a Levite, when he came to the place and saw him, passed by on the other side. But a Samaritan, as he traveled, came where the man was; and when he saw him, he took pity on him. He went to him and bandaged his wounds, pouring on oil and wine. Then he put the man on his own donkey, brought him to an inn and took care of him. The next day he took out two [days wages] and gave them to the innkeeper. ‘Look after him,’ he said, ‘and when I return, I will reimburse you for any extra expense you may have.’  

“Which of these three do you think was a neighbor to the man who fell into the hands of robbers?”  

The expert in the law replied, “The one who had mercy on him.”  

Jesus told him, “Go and do likewise.” [4]

It seems to me that everyone who asks, "What is required of me?" faces the question in return, "What is written in the Law? How do you read it?" Apparently, our answer to that question makes a difference.


[1] G.K. Chesterton, What's Wrong with the World, Part I, chapter five, Dodd and Mead, 1910, p 48

[2] ibid, pp 46-47

[3] C. F. Andrews, Mahatma Gandhi's Ideas: Including Selections from His Writings,  Macmillan, 1930, pp 94-95

[4] Luke 10:25-37, The Bible, New International Version