Deep despair over the seemingly endless hate
On Monday morning, I attended the prayer service at my church, Church of the Holy Faith, the oldest Episcopal Church in New Mexico, on East Palace Avenue in downtown Santa Fe. Our rector, the Rev. Robin Dodge, prayed for the 11 people in Pittsburgh “gunned down,” in Father Dodge’s words, two days earlier because they were Jewish.
As he spoke, I noted the large Star of David stained glass window high above the entrance to my beautiful Folk Gothic church. The golden star was lit by the early morning Santa Fe sun.
I wish I could say I felt comforted. Although it helped me on that sad morning to pray with others, right now I feel only deep despair over the seemingly endless hate and violence in our nation.
We are subjected to dangerous rants by President Donald Trump, for whom the majority of us did not vote. We are wondering what American democracy means in 2018. This summer, we watched innocent little ones taken away from their parents at our international border. Now we’re watching a 97-year-old Jewish woman in Pittsburgh be buried with gunshot wounds in her body. The gunshots seem to be entering all of our souls.
We know we have to keep voting; voting is a given. If we’re religious people, we know we have to keep attending services and worshipping in community. We know we have to keep reading the newspaper and paying attention.
But I feel that we must move quickly as a nation to tackle first things first. And the first things right now are guns. In January 2019, if Democrats have succeeded in taking control of Congress, we must immediately enact a permanent federal ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of assault weapons. The ban must be passed by a veto-proof majority in Congress.
We must start somewhere, and assault weapons are the obvious starting place. We do not allow ordinary citizens in this country to possess rocket launchers or cruise missiles. We do not perceive that ordinary citizens have any business with these weapons of war.
Also weapons of war, assault rifles such as the ones used in Pittsburgh and Parkland, Fla., are made and sold to do one thing: kill as many humans as possible as fast as possible. In a war this might be practical. In a temple or high school, it’s inhumane and indecent. We are so much better than this.
A possession ban does not have to be enforced house to house in America with police knocking on doors and searching under beds. The possession ban can be enforced naturally as assault rifles are discovered in drug searches, domestic violence disturbance calls, and other law enforcement. I suspect that many family members and friends will tip off police to assault weapons for their own protection.
Once assault rifles are illegal, they will slowly but surely disappear from our communities, and we can begin to wake up from this nightmare. Let the National Rifle Association scream bloody murder. Let Trump tweet that America is going to the dogs. Let conspiracy theorists say Sandy Hook never happened. We in America who truly love our kids and who take seriously our responsibility in our democracy will be deaf to their cries.