Baltimore pastor: Gun buybacks give communities ‘reason to hope’
Most everyone you talk to has something to say about gun buybacks, and I’ve heard a lot of opinions lately on my quest for support to pay people for their weapons, so we can get Glocks, sawed-off shotguns and semiautomatics off the streets and out of homes.
Do gun buybacks work? While I am not a researcher or criminologist, I tell everyone who asks me on my shoe-leather fundraising campaign: Yes. I’ve been a priest for 31 years and serve in the same Southwest Baltimore parish where I grew up, and what I know for sure is that the gun buyback and resource fair I’m planning for Saturday really is about building a coalition for peace and channeling hope to our neighbors.
Gun buybacks give people a legal way to dispose of unwanted firearms, and research shows safety is a top motivation for participants. The guns we will recover could be the same ones used in a suicide or an impulsive act of rage, or they could be stolen in a home invasion and discharged in a subsequent crime.
Could our event be what sparks a violent repeat offender to change his life and turn his piece over for a couple hundred dollars? I’ve certainly witnessed the Holy Spirit do bigger things.
Our event is about taking an action that is within our control as a community to confront the relentless pace of homicides — as just one part of the broader solution.
The heartache and trauma that follow the continuous loss of life swirls around
St. Joseph’s Monastery Parish in Irvington, where I work alongside many other community members toward a better quality of life for all. Our Catholic social teaching that is rooted in the dignity of every human person is something we all can agree on no matter what else may separate us.
For the location of the event, we picked the Edmondson Village Shopping Center. The 76-year-old West Baltimore complex has been subjected to declining investment followed by many forms of destruction and desperation. Early this year, 16-year-old Deanta Dorsey was killed at the shopping center in a mass shooting that injured four other teens outside a fastfood restaurant on their high school lunch break.
We are excited that Chicago TREND and 200 community investors will assume ownership of the complex this month.
The group will renovate the dilapidated buildings, enhance security and recruit more community amenities, hopefully to include a supermarket.
On the ground during the event, we will have information and resources from an impressive coalition, including My Brother’s Keeper, a comprehensive community-based program of Catholic Charities in West Baltimore. There, people can find a wide range of support from youth services to workforce development. The Ascension Saint Agnes Mobile Health Clinic will be on-site with community outreach services. On hand will also be LifeBridge Health’s Center for Hope, which supports survivors of violence and abuse across their life span. We will have remarks by dignitaries and interfaith leaders and 500 freshly made meals to give away provided by the Franciscan Center and the West Baltimore Renaissance Foundation.
To date, we’ve raised tens of thousands of dollars from parishes across the Archdiocese of Baltimore, Catholic Charities and the generosity of many individual donors. The money we don’t use toward the buyback will go to the Archdiocese’s Grief Ministry, which works with the police department’s homicide survivor advocates to provide groceries, household goods and comfort items to families in the immediate aftermath of a loved one’s murder.
Our coalition for peace joins the Catholic Church in New York, Chicago and elsewhere in direct response to Pope Francis’ call that we get guns out of circulation. Each one that is turned in brings with it the potential to save a life.
Come, tell everyone: We have reason to hope.
Rev. Michael Murphy (mmurphy@msjnet. edu) is pastor of St. Joseph’s Monastery Parish in Southwest Baltimore. He is recruiting partners and support for a gun buyback and resource fair in West Baltimore, to be held from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on Saturday at Edmondson Village Shopping Center, 4400 Edmondson Avenue in West Baltimore.