The school year of 2006 began rather quietly as most school years do. But on August 30th, a boy with a gun walked into a high school in Hillsborough, NC, and the new school year was marked by violence.

Little did we know that this August 30th shooting at a North Carolina high school would be a harbinger of a national spate of school shootings.  The young shooter in Hillsborough had a deadly plan and a number of guns; after killing his father he shot and wounded a student at a nearby high school.  In September, five members of the Duquesne University basketball team were shot on campus after attending a dance at the student center. Then a sixteen-year-old girl in a Wisconsin high school and a principal in Colorado were victims of gun homicide. And just as our nation was busy forgetting these shootings came the horror in Nickel Mines, Pennsylvania, when a gunman entered an Amish school and killed five young schoolgirls and wounded several others. For a country still haunted by the specter of Columbine, these latest shootings were particularly painful.

We are a nation at war with ourselves. There are nearly 200 million guns in homes across America.  More than 28,000 people lose their lives to gun violence every year in this country.  Of these gun deaths, more than half are suicides.  Every day we lose 45 people to gun-related suicide. As with all wars, children are the most innocent victims.  A recent report before the Child Fatality Task Force showed that in 2004, 51 of North Carolina’s children were murdered.  Of these, 39 were killed by guns.  In 2005, the number of children murdered rose to 78, with guns accounting for 61 of those deaths.

Nationally the statistics of child gun deaths are equally grim. Every day in America we lose 8 children to gun violence.  Since the shootings at Columbine High School more than 18,000 children have died, and for every child killed by a gun, four others are injured.  Gunshot wounds are the third leading cause of death for American children 4-15 years of age.

What has been Congress’ response to this unrelenting loss of life?  In the last six years Congress has failed to pass any meaningful gun control measures. Under the guise of protecting the rights of gun owners, our federal representatives allowed the assault weapons ban to expire, passed legislation that prohibits victims from suing irresponsible gun dealers, introduced legislation that would make it almost impossible for the ATF to revoke the licenses of gun dealers who act illegally, and attempted to make federal information about the sources of crime guns secret.  Congress has allowed the firearm industry to be largely unregulated, though its product can be lethal.  Even a teddy bear has to meet consumer product safety standards.  Handguns do not.

What poverty of spirit causes Americans to so glorify their guns – in movies, on television, in video games, on the streets of our neighborhoods and in the halls of Congress? Where are the prophets who will condemn the religion of the second amendment which preaches a sacred right to own any and all kinds of firearms?  Why are people of faith and conscience not protecting the sacred trust of children’s lives as vehemently as Congress protects the gun lobby?  It is time for pastors, priests, rabbis, and imams to speak out against the blasphemy of gun violence.  We must expose the magnificent half truth of “Guns don’t kill people. People kill people.”  Guns do kill people.  Guns kill our children with devastating regularity in this country.  One only has to look at the events of any week in America to see the full truth of gun violence.

Our God is a God who said, “Thou shalt have no other gods before me.”  When Charlton Heston held up a rifle at the NRA convention in Denver, Colorado just weeks after the shootings at Columbine High School and shouted, “…from my cold, dead hands…” he was making an idol of the gun.  And when our Congressional representatives ignore human suffering to do the bidding of the gun lobby in exchange for campaign dollars, they are making an idol of the gun.

Idolatry of the gun seduces with false power and teases with illusive security.  The idolatry of the gun makes the American obsession with possession of guns seem like freedom when all it really offers is a life lived in fear.  How can we see the face of God in every person or claim them as our brothers and sisters when we are so afraid that we think we must carry a concealed weapon everywhere we go?  How can we stretch our arms wide towards God’s goodness when one hand is grasping a gun?  How can we depend only on God when next to our hearts we are wearing a weapon?

The great commandment says we are to love God.  The second greatest commandment says we are to love our neighbors as ourselves.  As people of faith we must stand witness to the destructive power of gun violence.  We must say we will rely not on guns, but on God.  We will affirm not guns, but life.  We will bless not guns, but our common humanity. We must hold up a higher value saying that our children’s lives are a sacred trust and that human life is more important than the so-called right to bear arms. 

[Editor’s note—This Pastoral Reflection was written before the Virginia Tech shootings in 2008, which left thirty-three people dead.  Sadly, this tragedy only underscores Rev. Smith’s call to affirm life, not guns, to bless our common humanity.]

By Rev. Rachel R. Smith, Chaplain, Vigils Against Violence, Raleigh; Board of Directors, Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence