For a while now, the opinion writer Joe Nocera at the NY Times has been compiling daily accounts of gun violence in the US, in a blog entitled “Gun Report”. Each day, he lists, in a stark litany, the people reported killed or wounded through gun violence in America, as well as some brief background on the issue.
Since the first of the year, 2,660 people have been killed and 4,327 people have been wounded by gun violence in America, according to Gun Violence Archives.
In the wake of yet another mass shooting at Ft. Hood, on Friday, he included some context on the laws regarding guns and military bases.
While weapons stored on the base are required to be registered, those kept off base are not. And despite the treatment Specialist Ivan Lopez was undergoing—he was under diagnosis for P.T.S.D. and had reported suffering a traumatic brain injury sometime during his enlistment—his commanding officer was not allowed to ask Lopez about his privately owned .45-caliber Smith & Wesson semiautomatic pistol, which he would use to shoot 19 people.
Thanks to N.R.A. lobbying, the National Defense Authorization Act of 2011 was amended to prohibit the Department of Defense from collecting any information “relating to the otherwise lawful acquisition, possession, ownership, carrying, or other use of a privately owned firearm.” The N.R.A. said that the legislation would “protect the privacy and Second Amendment rights of gun-owning military personnel and their families.”
Read the report here.
As people called to be agents of reconciliation, and followers of the Prince of Peace, what is the church’s response to this issue? How are we called to deal with this aspect of American culture?
How have you handled it in your community?