I guess we should be grateful that at least the shooter only had a rifle and not a semi-automatic weapon that could have killed more people. It was over twenty years ago that we were jolted by the massacre at Columbine High School and since then we have had an exponential growth in what the FBI calls “active shooter events.”
In 2019 a divided Supreme Court held that people could keep unlicensed guns in their own homes. So who is to protect us when a person with this Second Amendment right decides to take that gun and use it on someone or a group of someones?
Only last year in New Jersey a man angry at a Federal judge tried to kill her and killed her son instead. Our Constitution is killing us, or at least the pro-gun interpretation of a document written over 200 years ago in very different circumstances. Thoughts and prayers are not enough; neither are repentant tears. We must end the plague of gun violence in America.
Prayer for the Day
Like the Psalmist, we cry in despair, O God,
When such meaningless gun violence occurs;
Troubled by the anger that seeks its solution in destruction,
We wonder how to heal from the pain that sears our soul.
Bestow on us, O God, the wisdom and courage we need
And help us clarify our approach to such senselessness.
In the name of him who gives us understanding,
Even Christ Jesus our Lord, Amen.
Thoughts for the Day
Daily mass killings are a uniquely American problem, because in America every halfwit can get his hands on a gun. You know what angry halfwits do in other countries? They throw potatoes.
Oliver Markus Malloy, German-American novelist
The future expected you. Now it mourns for you.
Ellen Hopkins, American novelist
I am poured out like water, and all my bones are out of joint;
My heart is like wax; it is melted within my breast
My mouth is dried up like a potsherd, and my tongue sticks to my jaws;
You lay me in the dust of death
Psalm 22: 14-15