I'm a lawful gun owner, and I'm writing you to please vote NO on HB123, as it lets organizations who hate America and freedom - like Sandy Hook Promise - into our schools to teach social programming under the guise of stopping suicide. When further scrutinized, Sandy Hook Promise as an organization is dedicated to the destruction of our cherished Second Amendment freedoms through firearm bans, magazine capacity restrictions, Federal and State Red Flag laws, and myriad violations to the fundamental human right of self-defense. In his testimony to the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee as well as the Senate Education Committee, Sandy Hook Promise founder and managing director Mark Barden revealed that the programming they want to initiate in Ohio’s schools was designed by “experts” like Marshall Ganz of Harvard University. Marshall Ganz is a far-left community organizer and a disciple of the Saul Alinsky model of public policy advocacy, and is infamous in the gun rights community for his work on the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama and his continued work with Obama’s “Organizing for America,” as well as his work for Moveon.org. The fact of the matter is that government-sponsored programs cannot achieve the outcome desired. Social inclusion and suicide are matters of the heart that require family and church solutions, not government-approved programming designed by far-left radicals who simply want access to children to further their own leftist agendas. There are things, however, that government can do to make sure they are not contributing to the problem. First, we should stop purging God and moral standards of right and wrong from our schools. When kids are taught from a very young age that they can simply “do what feels right,” that we are all just animals instead of created beings, is it any wonder that kids feel depressed? But second, gun owners urge this legislative body to use their investigatory and subpoena powers under rule 20 of the Rules of the Ohio Senate and ORC sections 101.41 to 101.46 or 101.81 of the ORC to subpoena pharmaceutical companies to force them to disclose any studies or evidence they have regarding the harmful, violent and suicidal effects of psychotropic/SSRI drugs on the juvenile and adult brains. As attorney Joshua Prince exhaustively detailed in his testimony on September 25, 2019 to the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee on this very issue, the rise of suicide amongst teenagers directly coincides with a 65% increase in usage rates for antidepressants between 1999 and 2014. In his testimony, Prince details how SSRI drugs like Celexa, Lexapro, Prozac, Paxil, Pexeva, Zoloft and Viibryd are drugs “most strongly and consistently implicated with acts of violence towards others.” Prince continued, “One study found a significant association between SSRIs and convictions for violent crimes in persons aged 15 to 24 years. Another study, which examined SSRI clinical trials, only had access to individual patient listing appendices for 32 of 70 trials and zero case report forms, but still identified a doubled risk of suicidality and aggression in children and adolescents. As detailed by Sam Jacobs in Prescription for Violence, The Corresponding Rise of Antidepressants, SSRIs & Mass Shootings, May 20, 2019, If you want to prevent suicides among school students, you need to investigate the drugs. Whenever there is an outbreak or risk of an e. coli outbreak with lettuce, the immediate and swift response is always to pull it all off the shelves, stop its distribution and track down the source of the problem and eliminate it. With myriad studies indicating that psychotropic/ssri drugs are a major contributing factor to depression, suicide and mass shootings, why is the same attention not given to the drugs as are given to a simple bacteria outbreak?? The fact is, you should have been hearing about this data not from gun rights organizations like ours, but from the organizations you have already heard from who are pretending to wish an end to “school violence” and suicides. But the fact that you have not heard about these things from them affirms what gun owners believe to be true about them. Please vote NO on HB123 and immediately go about the hard work of using your investigatory and subpoena powers under rule 20 of the Rules of the Ohio Senate and ORC sections 101.41 to 101.46 or 101.81 of the ORC to subpoena pharmaceutical companies to force them to disclose any studies or evidence they have regarding the harmful, violent and suicidal effects of psychotropic/SSRI drugs on the juvenile and adult brains.

Why on earth would you let Sandy Hook Promise and other gun-control organizations into our schools to teach ANYTHING? If you wanna stop suicides, you NEED to look into the drugs. Vote NO on HB123, and demand that Ohio investigate the drug companies and schools giving our kids drugs!

Sandy Hook Promise as an organization is dedicated to the destruction of our cherished Second Amendment freedoms through firearm bans, magazine capacity restrictions, Federal and State Red Flag laws, and myriad violations to the fundamental human right of self-defense. Their website is replete with encouragement for their supporters and activists to lobby their elected representatives to trample out the Second Amendment freedoms of Americans by the passing of gun control laws. Please vote NO on HB123 or any other social engineering bill where investigating the DRUGS isn't the starting point to preventing suicides among our school kids!

In his testimony to the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee as well as the Senate Education Committee on HB123, Sandy Hook Promise founder and managing director Mark Barden revealed that the programming they want to initiate in Ohio’s schools was designed with the input of “experts” like Marshall Ganz of Harvard University. Marshall Ganz is a far-left community organizer and a disciple of the Saul Alinsky model of public policy advocacy. Marshal Ganz is infamous in the gun rights community for his work on the 2008 presidential campaign of Barack Obama and his continued work with Obama’s “Organizing for America,” as well as his work for Moveon.org. Marshal Ganz hates the America our Founding Fathers gave us that is based on individual freedom and liberty. Gun owners oppose “programming” designed or approved by this terrible man. Vote NO on HB123, and gun owners are paying careful attention to who supports this bill in light of the coming elections.

In her testimony to the House Primary and Secondary Education Committee, Sandy Hook Promise’s Ohio chapter leader and lobbyist Annie Stephens confessed that their “Safety Assessment and Intervention” program was designed by Dr. Dewey Cornell from the University of Virginia. Dewey Cornell is well-known to the gun rights community not as an objective “scientist,” but rather a radicalized gun-control activist who has testified before bodies like this in favor of his 8-point plan to reduce “school violence,” the hallmarks of which include: - A total BAN on “assault-style” weapons, better known as sporting rifles. - Universal Background Checks for every state, so that gun owners can be tracked, traced and registered like sex offenders. - Red Flag Gun Confiscation Orders so that guns can be confiscated without due process. Quite frankly, people like this who adhere to ideologies like that should never be allowed into our schools to teach anything because their worldview is fatally flawed. Vote NO on HB123, and instead start focusing on the DRUGS that are causing all of these suicides and killings!

If the goal is to prevent suicides and mass killings, the fact of the matter is that government-sponsored programs cannot achieve the outcome desired. Social inclusion and suicide are matters of the heart that require family and church solutions, not government-approved programming designed by far-left radicals who simply want access to children to further their own leftist agendas. There are things, however, that government can do to make sure they are not contributing to the problem. The first thing we should do is stop purging God and moral standards of right and wrong from our schools. When kids are taught from a very young age that they can simply “do what feels right,” that we are all just animals instead of created beings, is it any wonder that kids feel depressed? Vote NO on HB123 or any other social indoctrination programs engineered by far-left radicals. It's time to start focusing our attention on the REAL culprits, like the breakdown of the family, the purging of morality from our schools, and the DRUGS! Vote NO on HB123!

HB123 isn't anything other than a social engineering bill designed by far-left radical gun-control activists like Dewey Cornell and Marshall Ganz. It should be voted NO on. Gun owners instead urge this legislative body to use their investigatory and subpoena powers under rule 20 of the Rules of the Ohio Senate and ORC sections 101.41 to 101.46 or 101.81 of the ORC to subpoena pharmaceutical companies to force them to disclose any studies or evidence they have regarding the harmful, violent and suicidal effects of psychotropic/SSRI drugs on the juvenile and adult brains. As attorney Joshua Prince exhaustively detailed in his testimony on September 25, 2019 to the Pennsylvania Senate Judiciary Committee on this very issue, the rise of suicide amongst teenagers directly coincides with a 65% increase in usage rates for antidepressants between 1999 and 2014. THE DRUGS are where this legislature should focus, instead of bringing in leftists activists to program our school kids!

Kelly Hayford, in Still At Large: Are Psychiatric Dugs the Hidden Culprit in Mass Shootings?, Issue #38, Children’s Health & Wellness, Family Life, June 1, 2019, declared: “we must demand that policymakers start answering the tough, but obvious, questions. For example, why has there never been a federal investigation on the link between psychiatric drugs and acts of senseless violence, including school shootings, given the evidence and the FDA warnings? Why are people who are already mentally unstable prescribed drugs that have the potential to exacerbate their symptoms or develop new ones, including suicidal thoughts and violent aggression toward others, in some cases 11 times more frequently than the average pharmaceutical drug?” The DRUGS are a HUGE contributing factor to suicide and depression and mass shootings by teenagers and young adults... THAT is where you should be focusing your efforts instead of focusing on programming designed by far-left activists who use suicides and shootings to advance their agenda! Vote NO on HB123, and Ohio Gun Owners will remind me how you voted in the coming elections.

Suicide prevention and social inclusion are matters of the heart. And matters of the heart require family and church solutions, not government-approved programs designed by leftist activists looking to promote an agenda. You want to stop suicides and shootings? Teach kids about morality. Teach kids about right and wrong. Teach kids that humans aren't just animals, that we are created beings with purposes and callings and potential. Years ago, when God was in our schools, we didn't have this problem. Years ago, when parents were involved with raising kids, we didn't have a drug problem. It's time for government to stop pretending they can solve problems like these and stop contributing to the problem. BAN psychotropic drugs from our schools, and VOTE NO on HB123. How you vote will be considered front and center in the coming elections.