If I had a magic wand, I’d wave it and keep our children safe. Then, I’d fill every heart with good will until hatred was no more. If only life were that simple.
Friends, we’re doing something drastically wrong when every week somebody is shooting and killing innocent people. I’ve heard “guns don’t kill people, people kill people,” and a whole lot more foolishness but we must create a balance between the right to buy and bear arms and figure out how to ensure everyone who has a gun is supposed to have one.
Until we do that, the violence that plagues our communities every week will continue. Consider these sobering statistics from this Memorial Day weekend, per the Gun Violence Archive, which tracks shootings in the United States: “there were at least 14 ‘mass shootings’… from early Saturday to late Monday.”
A mass shooting is defined as a “incident where four or more people are shot or killed, not including the shooter.” At least nine people were killed in the shootings, with more than 60 injured, according to this report. At the rate we’re going, there will be nowhere to run, nowhere to hide from the bullets with no names.
I don’t know what sensible gun control looks like — I just know what we see now isn’t it.
When President Joe Biden promised the grieving folks in Uvalde, Texas that he would work to make sure this never happens again, it sounded like the right thing to say but after Sandy Hook, Columbine, Parkland, FL, Paducah, KY, here we are again wringing our hands, leaving flowers and stuffed animals by the door, wringing our hands, and waiting on lawmakers to keep us safer.
As usual, there’s enough blame to go around — the door shouldn’t have been propped open, the police should’ve gone in sooner, but the children and their teachers are still dead. Their potential will never be realized.
Today we must stop the bickering and the infighting and think about our future together.
First, I don’t know if the gun lobbyists/lobbies are the solution or the problem, but I read a recent article about Robert C. Norris, a rancher who took the role of the Marlboro Man in television commercials for the cigarette brand.
His death at 90 made the news because he had stopped doing the commercial because as a nonsmoker, he felt he was setting a bad example for his children.
Second, we must work together to identify and address weaknesses along the spectrum—background checks, training, permits, mental health roadblocks, restrictions on certain types of weapons—everything. If you’re in a foxhole somewhere and enemies are shooting at you, you need a large clip to defend yourself and your comrades, but if the concerts you attend are so threatening that you need that much firepower, we’re all in trouble.
Finally, today the phrase “drop a dime” went the way of the rotary telephone but almost everyone has a phone in their hand, pocket, purse, somewhere on their person, so if you see something, you can say something. You know where guns belong and where they don’t. Invade your child’s privacy—better they be angry with you than half the neighborhood lost to a bomb they created while you were respecting their privacy.
The phrase, “cure thy children’s warring madness” from the familiar hymn, God of Grace, and God of Glory, is a gentle reminder that this prolonged “madness” will be our demise if we don’t act now with courage and wisdom. Heaven help us if we don’t.
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