Responding to Sandy Hook: part two

NOTE:  this is the very short transitional next part of my emerging essay re: a response to the massacre at Sandy Hook.  Part three will outline my understanding of why bold, new gun control laws are essential essential to the common good.

At the outset, let me confess that I am not an unbiased observer.  Once upon a time I attended Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT – for two years as a small child – as did my younger sister and brother.  I received my first Bible at the Newtown church and sang in my first church choir, too.  Nearly fifty years later, while I was exploring a new call to ministry that eventually led me to Pittsfield, I interviewed for the position of pastor at the Congregation Church in Newtown – and took a quick side trip to visit our old neighborhood – before the interview.  Let’s just say that I have great affection and respect for the people of this small community.  Unquestionably, proximity has played a powerful role in my strong reaction to this massacre.

But sharing some of the ties that bind with families in Newtown is not the only reason for my change of heart.  After all, I knew Gabby Gifford from my ten years of ministry in Tucson, AZ.  From time to time, we shopped at the same Safeway where she and eighteen other innocent people were shot.  And while the horror of her attempted murder left me stunned and shocked – as did the carnage and death from the Aurora, CO movie theatre shooting where 12 people died and 58 were wounded – like so many other Americans I had sadly come to accept such violence as part of our inevitable status quo.   It was tragic, emotionally incomprehensible and evil, to be sure, but also just a part of another day in America where on average 18 people die every 24 hours by gun violence.   Intellectually this culture of violence was repugnant to me, but my revulsion remained theoretical because other demands captured my attention and imagination.  Like C.S. Lewis before the death of his beloved wife, Joy, the reality of American violence was a vile abstraction for me.

But my heart was broken and my conscience enflamed when twenty innocent, small children were slaughtered as they waited for their classless to begin on Friday morning in Newtown.  Those babies looked like my daughters thirty years ago – or the children who gather around me each Sunday morning in the chancel of our church in another American small town in America – and I found myself weeping uncontrollably in the aftermath of the

attack.  In many ways it felt like September 11^th 2001 all over again.  And I am not ashamed to say that I still find myself weeping whenever I take the time to fully consider the fact that cold blooded, mass murder has become an acceptable norm for America in the 21st century.  Since the domestic terrorist attack of December 14, 2012 at Sandy Hook Elementary School, there have been 643 gun related deaths throughout the United States – and truth be told, this is a conservative estimate.

Small wonder that on the second anniversary of the attempted murder of Representative Gabby Giffords not only has former General Stanley McKrystal condemned the epidemic of gun violence in America – and urged strict control on assault weapons designed only for combat – but Ms. Gifford herself has launched Americans for Responsible Solutions.  “In response to a horrific series of shootings that have sown terror in our communities, victimized tens of thousands of Americans and left one of its own bleeding and near death in a Tucson parking lot, Congress has done something quite extraordinary - nothing at all,” wrote Gifford and her husband, Mark Kelly in USA Today. 

As a part of a growing movement of compassion and common sense, “the couple hopes to work with politicians to take gun lobbyists head-on and engage the country in a discussion about preventing gun violence. They also hope to establish a requirement for a comprehensive background check for the private sale of guns and address the issue of the treatment of mentally ill people in the United States.” Said Kelly, a veteran of Desert Storm, “the only reason for a weapon to have an extended magazine is to kill people… lots of people.” (ABC News)  President Obama has made a commitment to move gun control forward and Senator Diane Feinstien is making a strong case for radical reform.

And so begins what I see as a three pronged fight for rational gun control in the USA:  a) responsible gun owners are starting to speak out against the current madness; b) politicians are searching for acceptable and practical middle ground; and c) people of faith and compassion are starting to push the envelope beyond what is expedient so that this kairos moment is not wasted.