Do we love our guns more than we love our children?
Run. Hide. Fight. The shortened version of “Civilian Response to Active Shooter Events.”
Drills for what to do during a shooting are routine in schools these days, even for kindergartners. As are front-page photos of small children and teenagers running from a killing scene with their hands held high over their heads. Children sobbing in each other’s arms.
Gun violence in places of education are neither rare nor recent, occurring in universities, high schools, elementary schools, even in churchaffiliated schools. University of Texas. Columbine. Thurston High School-Oregon. Virginia Tech. Sandy Hook. Episcopal High School-Jacksonville. Marjorie Stoneman-Douglas. Santa Fe High School. UNC-Charlotte. STEM School Highlands Ranch.
Media reports are front and center ... until whatever next day’s “breaking news” occurs. And then, these events fade from public attention as quickly as thoughts and prayers.
In the religious tradition I follow, care for children is presumed a high value. We baptize them and promise to support them in their life in Christ. We provide them education, and model, we hope, formation for living a life of kindness, integrity, justice and unselfish love.
We teach them “Jesus Loves Me This I Know” and “Jesus Loves The Little Children.” We read them the story of the baby Moses being rescued from certain death by the most unexpected savior (the Pharaoh’s daughter). We tell them how Mary and Joseph fled hearth and home to keep their infant baby safe from the corrupt Herod.
We tell them how baby Jesus becomes the fearless Jesus who rebukes his disciples (who try to push aside children who are being brought for a blessing) and says, “Let the little children come to me, and do not stop them; for it is to such as these that the kingdom of heaven belongs.” (Matthew 19:14)
And yet. When the horror of deaths and injuries invade our everyday world, too many of us seem hard pressed to find the courage to take bold action to keep our children safe.
It appears that we adults default to the children. We let them take the hits. (So much for the kingdom of heaven.) In early May, two students, Riley Howell and Kendrick Castillo, gave their lives as they took on an armed shooter in their classroom, thus preventing even more deadly carnage. Two young men choose to offer the ultimate incarnation of run, hide, fight.
We watch an interview of a 12-year-old boy who says, “I was hiding in the corner. I had my hand on a metal baseball bat, just in case. Because I was going to go down fighting if I was going to go down.”
Teenagers create their own activist groups. They travel around the country to keep the need for action on gun control in high profile. They march. They call their legislators. They speak up at the White House. And when they can, they vote.
But the killing continues. Forty-five incidents of gunfire on school grounds thus far in 2019, the website everytownresearch.org reports. Nine deaths (including three suicides), 29 injuries. There’s no way to count the emotional injuries our children are suffering.
The season of Easter is long in many liturgical traditions: 50 days from the Sunday of the Resurrection until Pentecost, June 9th this year. A season for celebrating the opportunities for new life. People of faith can help that new life happen. But it takes more than thoughts and prayers. We must pray that God will give us strength, courage to act. To do what cries out to be done to protect the vulnerable. To demand, bring about life-supporting policies concerning the manufacture and use of firearms. (As other nations have done.)
True, such action inevitably finds itself up against a gun lobby determined (and willing to spend lots of money) to maintain easy access to guns, even those designed for 21st-century warfare.
The question haunts. Do we love our guns more than we love our children?
Media reports are front and center ... until whatever next day’s “breaking news” occurs. And then, these events fade from public attention as quickly as thoughts and prayers.
Isabel F. Steilberg is a priest in the Episcopal Diocese of Southern Virginia. She can be reached by email at isabel.steilberg@gmail.com.