Gun Violence

Aaron E. Sanchez 8-13-2019

Shocked and saddened citizens of El Paso, Texas paying their respects to the memorial wall created just outside the parking area for the Walmart store. August 8, 2019. Credit: Shutterstock. 

“Amor Eterno,”or Eternal Love, was written in 1984 by the famed Mexican singer and song writer Juan Gabriel, or JuanGa, after his mother passed away. It has become a standard that is played at funerals, wakes, get-togethers, and even restaurants across the U.S., Mexico, and the world to remember family and loved ones who have passed away.

Image via REUTERS/Jose Luis Gonzalez

Some Latinx people have known — and others have suspected — this land is not safe for us, but the extent to which that suspicion has been confirmed in El Paso is terrifying. The perpetrator in this massacre was deliberate in his plan to counter the “Hispanic invasion.” It’s tempting to believe all this has been incited by the current president’s violent rhetoric. But while that rhetoric has added much fuel to the fire, the fire has been burning for a long time. 

Najeeba Syeed 7-01-2019

Illustration by Hugh D’Andrade

IN THE WAKE of the terrorist attacks on two mosques in Christchurch, New Zealand, earlier this year, Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern seamlessly incorporated Muslim rituals into the public rites of grieving. Her response to the attacks was striking for its cultural competence in engaging Muslim tradition and also projecting it in ways that engaged a broader audience to build empathy and not further structural violence. It allowed for immediate national unity and rehumanizing of the Muslim community.

The prime minister’s response to the violent attacks in New Zealand pointed out the importance of extending interreligious education to state actors.

Image via REUTERS/Shannon Stapleton

"The reactions are full spectrum from shock to upset to being angry, but not angry at what I'm doing, angry at the stark fact that this could be a reality," the artist, who does not reveal his real name, said in an interview on Monday.

CREDIT: CORNELIUS FILM

Do you remember where you were four years ago when you heard the news?

Jim Wallis 6-06-2019

Makeshift memorial outside a municipal government building where a shooting incident occurred in Virginia Beach, Va., June 1, 2019. REUTERS/Jonathan Drake

The news on Friday was devastating: There had been yet another mass shooting, this time in Virginia Beach, and 12 people were killed. Many of us had the same painful reactions of grief for the families, fear that this could happen to someone I love one day, anger at the gun manufacturers whose influence through the NRA makes them complicit in both the mass shootings and the daily epidemic of gun violence. 

Rev. Sharon Risher 5-06-2019

I had worked with so many patients and families who had suffered trauma and crisis, especially families who had lost someone to senseless gun violence, but it appeared my training didn’t come into play for myself. I walked around my apartment, drinking coffee and smoking cigarettes, in agony. Then my chaplain hat popped up. I told myself, “Sharon, you know hours of waiting to hear news about someone usually means the patient is dead.” The reality of it all was shattering.

Greg Williams 5-03-2019

Howard Kaye holds his daughter Hannah Jacqueline Kaye at the funeral for Lori Gilbert-Kaye, the sole fatality of the  shooting at Chabad synagogue in Poway. REUTERS/John Gastaldo

This twisted hate of anti-Semitism isn't the logical end point of my tradition but rather a perverted version of it — a version that has flourished before but has never been right or faithful.

Anna Sutterer 3-27-2019

Prayer in the fearful context of gun violence is mysterious to me. I’m still surprised the first thing through my mind, huddled in a classroom corner was this: Praise God from whom all blessings flow… The doxology. Without knowledge of who fired the shot that echoed through the hall, or if the footfalls beyond the door would bring security or more chaos, I had, amazingly, some peace from this liturgical breath prayer. I gripped my friends’ hands and asked God to intervene - to save the shooter who was a child lost and in danger.

Jamie D. Aten 2-19-2019

City of Lights Community Prayer Vigil in Aurora, Ill. Photo Courtesy of Jamie D. Aten. 

Two days after a brutal workplace shooting in the Chicago suburb of Aurora, where five were killed and six were injured, over 1,000 people joined together for a prayer vigil at the Henry Pratt Company plant, filling the street near the building where the shooting occurred. As several local pastors shared prayers with the huge gathering of mourners, the only sounds that broke the silence between prayers were quiet sobs. Beside a gate connected to the plant, people placed flowers, candles, and signs.

The initials of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School and a placard are placed on the fence at Park Trails Elementary School, following a mass shooting in Parkland, Fla., April 9, 2018. REUTERS/Carlos Garcia Rawlin

One year after the Valentine's Day massacre inside a Florida school, students and families leading a nationwide push for gun safety will pause on Thursday for the anniversary of the deadliest U.S. high school shooting.

Many students were expected to stay home from a shortened class day at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., where a former student with an assault gun killed 17 people on Feb. 14, 2018.

Rob Schenck 2-13-2019

Candlelight event organized by Runner's Depot to honor the 17 victims from the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Coral Springs, Fla. on Feb 25th, 2018. Shutterstock / Humberto Vidal.

This week, scores of people will once again experience the grief of missing loved ones who were cut down by a deranged young man with multiple deadly weapons in the high school he shared with his victims. The Parkland, Fla. mass shooting at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School, which killed 17 people and injured 17, joins the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting, which wiped out a classroom of precious children, as two of the most horrific moments in American history. The irony that the Parkland slaughter was on Valentine’s Day only increases the suffering. While many will celebrate having and enjoying their loved ones in their lives, the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School survivors will only feel afresh a terrible vacuum.

Brandi Miller 2-07-2019

Because the violence of the past was so bad, supposed lesser forms of violence seem less worthy of deconstruction. Toxic masculinity and gun violence are fruits of the same legacy. While it is much easier now to say that slavery and genocide were evils, we have failed to cut them off at their roots, the roots that reek of manipulated biblical texts, hyper masculine domination, and antiquated assumptions about gender. We cannot expect that simply acknowledging the events that resulted from toxic masculinity in the past will deconstruct the assumptions and values that created it to begin with.

In an effort to help our family grieve the loss of our beloved Vickie Lee Jones, a preacher told us that it was God’s will that a white man named Gregory Alan Bush shot her to death in the parking lot of a Kroger grocery store outside of Louisville, Ky. because, as a witnesses implied, she was black.

It was not.

Rev. Sharon Risher 12-18-2018

Stonewall Inn vigil on behalf of the victims of the Orlando Pulse massacre. New York - MAY 13, 2016. Shutterstock. 

As a woman of faith, I urge my fellow clergy members and faith leaders to join me in standing in solidarity with the transgender community. Christianity tasks us to appeal to people’s hearts and to stand up for the most marginalized in our society. And this is why we cannot afford to remain silent on the hate that permeates American society, and the lax gun laws that help make it fatal. We must remind others that hate has no place in our society.

Kaitlin Curtice 11-08-2018

We try to make sense of hate,
try to trace the line
of white supremacy.

We see that though we’ve come so far,
it’s not so far that we’ve come.

So we breathe and remember:
Jesus wept.

Vigil for the victims of Pittsburgh synagogue shooting in Pittsburgh, Penn., Oct. 27, 2018. REUTERS/John Altdorfer

O God, this day we grieve your children who were lost,
and we, as one, are horrified by hatred’s cost.
For people loved by you— your children, called and blest—
were murdered on their Sabbath Day of prayer and rest.

SWAT police officers respond after a gunman opened fire at the Tree of Life synagogue in Pittsburgh, Penn.,  Oct. 27, 2018. REUTERS/John Altdorfer

A gunman yelling, “All Jews must die,” stormed a Pittsburgh synagogue during Saturday services, killing at least eight worshippers and wounding six others, including four police officers, before he was arrested.

No more breaking news breaking our hearts. 
No lock down drills, students learning
to drop to the floor, out of the line of vision.
No bump stocks. No more AK 5’s, 47’s. No need
for women to open their purses before they enter
the play, the movie, the concert. And no need
to fear windows that offer vantage points
for taking aim.

the Web Editors 6-25-2018

Image via TheNoxid / Flickr

Protestors have marched the streets of downtown Pittsburgh since Rose, 17, was fatally shot three times by an East Pittsburgh police officer as he ran from a vehicle, after it was stopped by police who were investigating a nearby shooting.