This past Saturday marked eight years since the mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School that claimed the lives of 17 people and injured 17 others. Aalayah Eastmond, a survivor of the shooting and a Team ENOUGH leader at Brady, published a moving op-ed in USA Today that lays bare the further erosion of public safety currently before Congress.

I encourage you to read it and share it widely with your networks because the dangerous bill that Aalayah wrote about, the so-called “Innovate to De-Escalate Act” (H.R. 2189), passed the House of Representatives and is now being primed for consideration in the United States Senate. If it becomes law, this legislation would drive a massive truck through the Gun Control Act of 1968, which is the underpinning of our nation’s Brady Background Check system.

As Aalayah shares in her USA Today piece and as I covered in last week’s post, the weapons industry claims that H.R. 2189 provides a necessary change to give law enforcement access to “less-than-lethal” devices, including TASERs, as part of their policing activities. One of the many problems with this legislation is that it’s based on a false premisePolice across the country already have access to these weapons and nothing under federal law prohibits them from accessing these technologies.

So why is Axon Corporation, with one of the highest paid CEOs in the U.S. and contracts with law enforcement across the country to use their Taser technology, pushing this legislation? Money.

This bill would create a new consumer market, open to domestic abusers and other prohibited purchasers who are unable to pass a background check, for an entirely new category of projectile weapons. These devices, which are currently regulated like firearms, would be free of basic safeguards like serialization, background checks, and record keeping that are necessary to protect our safety and welfare from individuals seeking to do us harm.

The bill’s text opens the door for a new DIY market for firearms (just like the “ghost gun” market we have worked so hard to shut down), meaning that untraceable and dangerous weapons could be sold and purchased by literally anyone – your underage children, domestic abusers, people who have been convicted of violent felonies, and others. This bill has been falsely sold as necessary for law enforcement but actually creates much bigger risks for law enforcement and civilians alike.

And it should be no surprise that the NRA and Gun Owners of America are also lobbying Congress to pass this legislation.

We will pay the price.

Regardless of how this legislation is framed and marketed, the bill’s biggest and most immediate beneficiaries would be corporate shareholders, not the communities it claims to protect.

Aalayah says what too many in Congress will not. We must never allow corporate profit incentives to dictate policy, especially policies that can impact who lives and who dies. As we remember the Parkland tragedy, her voice is a powerful reminder of exactly who these decisions directly affect.

If you missed her piece, take a moment today to read it in full. The Senate is poised to act on this bill and we need all hands on deck. Consider signing our petition here.