From Bishop Dan Edwards of the Diocese of Nevada:
Our hearts break for the school shooting victims and their families in Sparks, Nevada today. St. Paul’s Episcopal Church, 1135 12th St., Sparks will meet for prayer and healing for the whole community at 6 pm (Pacific) tonight.
Parents, teachers, students, and all of us are personally affected when violence erupts in a school, which of all places should be safe for children, a place to learn and grow. I ask all Nevadans to hold the people of Sparks, especially those who died, those who were wounded, and those mourn, in prayer this week and consider deliberately and compassionately what we can do to keep our children safe.
Dean Gary Hall of Washington National Cathedral has also released a statement:
“The news of Monday’s shooting at Sparks Middle School in Nevada came as a disturbing reminder that our nation has made little meaningful progress toward enacting widely supported, common-sense measures to prevent gun violence since the Sandy Hook shootings in Newtown, Conn., last December. Even as we grieve with and for the Sparks community and for all directly affected by the shooting, we also grieve for the 50 children and teens that die or are injured from guns every day. While their tragedies go widely unreported in the news media, we pledge ourselves to a new level of resolve to end gun violence involving children.”
Just yesterday Washington National Cathedral welcomed Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman and former Surgeon General David Satcher, along with two other leading physicians, for the twenty-second national observance of Children’s Sabbath. This year’s theme, “Beating Swords into Plowshares: Ending the Violence of Guns and Child Poverty,” explored some of the many interrelated factors that make gun violence such a problem in our nation and such a danger to our nation’s youth. http://www.nationalcathedral.org/gunControl
“We will continue to explore gun violence, its public health consequences, and the toll it takes on children in the months ahead,” said Dean Hall. “We will continue to pray that other houses of worship across the country will join us in demanding an end to the easy availability of guns that so recklessly endangers the most vulnerable in our cities, our work, our gathering places, and—increasingly—our schools.”
Episcopalians Against Gun Violence keeps up with news about the church’s efforts to reduce gun violence through service and advocacy.