God Not Guns Blog

In honor of Mother's Day, I thought I'd tell you something about its founder - Julia Ward Howe. You may already know she wrote the "Battle Hymn of the Republic," was an abolitionist and a tireless worker for women's right to vote along with Susan B. Anthony and Elizabeth Cady Stanton. You may not know that she was also the founder of Mother's Day. But the Mother's Day envisioned by Julia Ward Howe was a far cry from the cards and roses, brunch and lunch kind of day we now celebrate.

Julia became a passionate voice for peace after witnessing the carnage of the American Civil War. In 1870, at the start of the Franco-Prussian War, she wrote a proclamation calling on the women of the world to unite for peace. She envisioned a national 'Mother's Day' which would bring the power and influence of women to bear in preventing the wars waged by men.

Today we are experiencing war of a different sort - that of gun violence on our own streets, in our own cities, and against our own children. The deaths at Virginia Tech, UNC, Auburn, Northern Illinois Universities, the deaths of children in drive-by shootings in Chicago, Los Angeles, Philadelphia and other cities, the deaths of young black men killed by other young black men, the deaths of Amish girls in Pennsylvania are evidence of the carnage of our time. To stop the gun violence in our midst it's going to take the same kind of courage and passion that Julia Ward Howe had. That's why I think her Mother's Day Proclamation of 1870 is still relevant:

Arise, then, women of this day!
Arise, all women who have breasts,
Whether our baptism be of water or of tears!

Say firmly:
"We will not have great questions decided by irrelevant agencies, Our husbands will not come to us, reeking with carnage, for caresses and applause. Our sons shall not be taken from us to unlearn all that we have been able to teach them of charity, mercy and patience. We, the women of one country, will be too tender of those of another country to allow our sons to be trained to injure theirs."

From the bosom of the devastated Earth a voice goes up with our own. It says: "Disarm! Disarm! The sword of murder is not the balance of justice." Blood does not wipe out dishonor, nor violence indicate possession. As men have often forsaken the plough and the anvil at the summons of war, Let women now leave all that may be left of home for a great and earnest day of counsel.

Let them meet first, as women, to bewail and commemorate the dead.
Let them solemnly take counsel with each other as to the means
Whereby the great human family can live in peace,
Each bearing after his own time the sacred impress, not of Caesar,
But of God.

In the name of womanhood and humanity, I earnestly ask
That a general congress of women without limit of nationality
May be appointed and held at someplace deemed most convenient
And at the earliest period consistent with its objects,
To promote the alliance of the different nationalities,
The amicable settlement of international questions,
The great and general interests of peace.

Today is the 10th anniversary of the Vigils Against Violence held in Raleigh, NC. The vigils were begun as a joint ministry of Martin Street and Pullen Memorial Baptist churches as the number of homicides soared in our city. In the last several years the homicide rate has hovered around 22 victims each year. And though the number of persons killed may change somewhat, the cause of death stays the same: handguns. There is no doubt that the drug trade also is a major factor in these deaths as is poverty and lack of hope. But the presence of a handgun makes any argument turn lethal. In this respect Raleigh is no different from Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta or Los Angeles. The number of gun deaths per year in our city is just a fraction of the gun deaths in these larger citites, but the pain is the same and it reaches out in all directions.

Today at 4pm a circle of people will gather on Coleman Street where a young, black man was shot and killed. We will pray for him, his family and his neighborhood. We will also pray for the two young, black men who shot Antonio McLean. As we prepare to leave we will say these words in unison:

We will stand up to violence. We stand together expressing our unity, our donnection to each other, and to the divine. We pray for transformation and for healing. Let the Spirit of our Creator move through us, helping us to transform and heal our communities. And let us begin by transforming ourselves.

We go in peace and in hope.

Yesterday, on the campus of UNC-Chapel Hill, we held a lie-in to remember the victims of Virginia Tech and students in North Carolina who have been killed by gun. These are my remarks:

One year ago today, 32 people were killed on the campus of Virginia Tech University in the deadliest school shooting and worst civilian mass shooting in the history of our country. We are gathered here today in remembrance of those who lost their lives at Virginia Tech, and for all the victims that have been lost to gun violence in the year since that shooting. Today we wear the colors of Virginia Tech – ribbons hand-made by the survivors and families of the victims of that shooting. We also wear the light blue of Carolina and the dark blue of Duke because we include in our memorial Eve Carson of UNC, Abhijit Mohato of Duke University, Denita Smith of NCCU, Lauren Burke of Auburn University, and the seven students killed at Northern Illinois University.

Gun violence is an insidious and mostly silent epidemic that is taking the lives of nearly 30,000 Americans each year in homicides, suicides and unintentional shootings. Thirty- two people a day are murdered by guns in America. Thirty-two today, tomorrow, the next day, 32 the day after that and 32 the day after that. These are killings with no end in sight unless we choose to act. More than any other, this generation of college students has been affected by gun violence. Whether campus shootings take one life or seven lives or thirty-two lives, an entire community is traumatized.

There are several things we can do…

1) Remember the victims. As we call the names of 35 students today we join hundreds of others holding events just like this across the country. Today we are part of something bigger than ourselves. We are part of a national community of support and remembrance for the students who were killed and injured at Virginia Tech and other college campuses.

2) Act on behalf of ALL victims of gun violence – by getting laws passed that stop the flow of illegal guns. As Marian Wright Edleman, the founder of the Children’s Defense Fund said, “Guns and violence are in every nook and cranny of America. Many children can get a gun quicker than they can get a book out of the library.” It should not be so easy to get a gun. Children, criminals, and the mentally ill should not have easy access to a gun. By requiring that every gun sale be contingent on a background check we can restrict gun purchases to responsible adults only. This is called closing the gun show loophole. No background check, no sale, no gun.

3) The last and most important – is to honor the victims of gun violence by living lives of peaceful purpose. We can choose to resolve conflict without violence, to choose reconciliation over revenge, and justice over retaliation. We can be a force for non-violence and we must start with ourselves. The power of peace is stronger than any bullet and we hold that power in our hearts and hands.

Thank you for coming. Go in peace.

I recently came across this quote from Marian Wright Edleman, the founder of the Children's Defense Fund: "It's everywhere. Guns and violence are in every nook and cranny of America. Many children can get a gun quicker than they can get a book out of the library. This puts us all at risk."

Next week is the one-year anniversary of the shootings at Virginia Tech University where a mentally ill gunman killed 32 people. I keep thinking about this generation of students and the gun violence they have experienced. My youngest daughter was in the sixth grade when the shootings at Columbine High School occurred. She was a sophomore in college when the shootings a Virginia Tech occurred. In the year since the Virginia Tech shootings, students at Auburn University, UNC-Chapel Hill, Duke, and Northern Illinois University have seen guns kill and injure on their campuses. These shootings have created a generation of children and young adults traumatized by gun violence.

Marian Wright Edleman is right - guns are in every nook and cranny in America and our children especially are at risk. Let's do something about this violent epidemic that is killing and injuring our children. Let's make ending gun violence our righteous cause.

Let me say, first thing that I've been away from this space for too long. I was paralyzed. Our community has been in shock because on Mar. 5, Eve Carson, the student body president at UNC-Chapel Hill was leaving the house she shared with roommates, on her way to do something for class when two young men with a gun happened to see her. They took her car and ATM card, and in return they got $200 and her life. She was 22 years old.

This hit especially hard for me because when my daughter was a 22-year-old college student she was, like Eve, approached by two men with a gun. They pushed her to the ground, put the gun to her head threatening over and over again to kill her because she was fumbling with her keys and wallet. My daughter was not killed. And for that I am eternally, heart-stoppingly grateful. I am grateful that 'our' gunmen were....what? Nicer? Smarter? Older and less reckless? They wanted her car not her life.

My gratitude for my daughter's life has made me more acutely aware of the grief felt by those who loved Eve and every other mother who has lost a child to gun violence. There but for the click of a trigger go I. So I've been paralyzed, not wanting to think about guns or write about gun violence. This epidemic is insidious and silent - it's an epidemic that kills and causes physical injury. But it's greatest threat is wounds it inflicts on our souls.

A friend included this quote from Martin Luther King, Jr. in a vigil notice,"There are some things in our society and in our world to which I'm proud to be maladjusted, to which I call upon all people of good will to be maladjusted, until the good society is realized...I never intend to adjust myself to the madness...and the self-defeating effects of physical violence."

Rev. King was so committed to the principal of non-violence that, in spite of threats to his life and family, he never carried a gun or allowed his bodyguards to carry a gun. Sometimes I wonder if we have so associated Rev. King with the civil rights movement that we have forgotten his equally strong commitment to non-violence. He never wavered in his conviction that non-violence was the path God wants us to follow. Dr. King believed that justice could not be served through violence.

What does this commitment to non-violence say to us today? 32 Americans are murdered each day by guns and it hardly makes the news. Even a catastrophic shooting like that at Northwestern Illinois University or Virginia Tech causes no great changes in our gun laws. Are we acquiesing to a society that takes such violence for granted?

If so, I will stand with Dr. King and say I'm proud to be maladjusted.

Feb. 14 -  Five people were shot and killed and sixteen injured at Northern Illinois University. The shooter then killed himself.

Feb. 12 - a fifteen-year-old high school student in Oxnard, California was shot and killed by a fourteen-year-old student.

Feb. 8 - two people were shot and killed at Louisiana Technical College in Baton Rouge. The shooter then killed herself.

Feb. 7 - five people were killed during a City Council meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri.

Feb. 6 - in Los Angeles, a man killed a SWAT officer and injured another after he killed three members of his own family.

Feb. 2 -a man killed five women and injured another as they were shopping in a suburban store in Chicago. Also on Feb. 2, a 16-year-old shot and killed his parents and two brothers in Maryland.

These are the shootings that made the national news. Many others did not.

As I sat in church this morning, I prayed for all who are grieving these deaths. And in the midst of my own prayer, I heard something from the pastor's prayer that has remained with me all day..."The greed of some should give way to the needs of many..."

It seems to me that we are a gun-greedy nation. There are 192 million privately owned guns in America. 65 million of these are handguns. Is our desire for guns greater than our desire for peace? Is our love of guns greater than our love for our neighbor? Does our greed for guns outweigh our need for community?

How much longer will the needs of many - for streets, schools, homes, and places of work and worship free of gun violence - be subsumed by the greed of a few who want easy access to powerful weapons?

How long O Lord, how long?

I recently did a radio interview. It was a call-in show and the subject was North Carolina’s gun law rating from the Brady Campaign (our state scored 20 out of a possible 100 points) and I was asked to talk about why NC got such a low score. Not surprisingly the show was inundated with pro-gun rights callers. One theme ran throughout nearly every call – that no matter how many gun control laws there are, criminals will still get guns, people will still get killed and law-abiding people will suffer the consequences. I must admit that there is a kernel of truth here. Good, sensible gun laws won’t completely eradicate gun violence – criminals will still get guns and there will still be shootings. But does that mean we shouldn’t try?

I think about drunk driving. There was a time when my friends and I thought nothing of popping open a can of beer, getting into the car and driving over to Chapel Hill for a basketball game where we drank more beer and then drove home. There was no such thing as a designated driver. There was no such slogan as ‘Friends don’t let friends drive drunk.’ But the culture changed in large measure because people were being killed by drunk drivers and laws were passed to help prevent these deaths. The laws haven’t completely eradicated drunk driving. People still get drunk and drive and people still get killed. But there is no doubt that these laws have saved lives. I think the same thing applies to gun control. We want to save lives even though we know we won’t save every life. We want to protect our children and young people from danger. We want our neighborhoods to be safe. Sensible gun laws will save lives. No doubt about it.

We had a vigil for ‘Smiley’ Christmas on Sunday. He was 23 years old, a married father of two children ages 6 and 4 and an usher in his church. A week ago he was shot to death in a trash-strewn, vacant lot shortly after 1am. At the vigil we also remembered three other men who had been shot and killed in the month of January.

In the first 25 days of this new year, our community lost four young men to guns. Last year we had 22 homicides in our medium-sized city. Of those, seventeen were gun deaths and five were shot by one man- a convicted felon - who had an illegal gun. One gun, five deaths.

We have to ask, “Where did the gun come from?” The illegal gun market is alive and well all across the country. How long are we going to tolerate the human cost – children without fathers or mothers, husbands or wives without their partner, mothers without sons? At our vigil we always affirm that each life matters to God and each life matters to us. We pray for the victims, the neighborhoods and the perpetrators because the circle of pain from one gun death goes in many directions.

I live in Raleigh, NC which is nowhere near Littleton, Colorado, but my life was forever changed by the shootings at Columbine High School. It was as if the bullets fired at that school flew thousands of miles across the country and landed in my own backyard. My two youngest children were 12 and 15 at the time, and suddenly they were afraid to go to school. I ached knowing that my children would never again walk the halls in complete confidence that they were safe; they would never again witness a fight in the cafeteria without hoping that no one had a gun; they would see weird, loner kind of kids and wonder if they harbored violent fantasies. I had no reassuring answer for my children when they asked if anything like Columbine could happen at their schools. Of course it could.

After Columbine, I had a really specific reason for wanting to do something about gun violence. I went to Washington, DC on Mother’s Day 2000 for the Million Mom March and helped organize a local MMM chapter. I learned about the Second Amendment, gun laws and the gun lobby. I learned statistics about gun deaths and injuries– but it wasn’t until I met mothers and fathers whose sons had been shot and killed, young men who had been paralyzed by a bullet in their spines, young widows whose husbands had been shot – it wasn’t until I talked with them and cried with them that I began to realize that gun violence isn’t just a thorny legal issue or a hot button political issue. Gun violence is a justice issue – one that my faith challenges me to not to ignore.

I believe every person is created in God’s image, that we are all God’s children, and that each gun death diminishes my greater human family. I believe that God is a God who desires peace, and that each gun death threatens the divine vision of a peaceable kingdom. I believe the first commandment which says “You shall have no other gods before me” and I believe that guns are revered as idols in our culture. I believe that the killing that goes on in our country is an affront to God who loves us and created us. That’s why I’m now the chaplain for a group called ‘Vigils Against Violence’ which I’ll tell you about next time…

We hold the Virginia Tech University community in our prayers as they struggle to cope with the shock and sorrow of this week’s shooting.

Our nation has once again been brought to our knees by the loss of and injury to so many innocent lives. Every day we lose 80 people to firearm injury in this country, 32 of which are gun homicides.

It is time for us to seek forgiveness for allowing guns to proliferate, for forgetting the victims of other shootings, and for tolerating a Congress that has ingratiated itself to the gun lobby.

We pray for the courage to raise our voices from churches, synagogues, temples, and mosques shouting in unison, “No More!"

• 20 things you and your congregation can do
• Add your name to our growing list of people who are saying "Enough Is Enough!"