By Jean Fitzpatrick
I didn’t know Eve Carson, and yet when I read that she’d been killed with a handgun on a suburban street near the UNC Chapel Hill campus, I could hardly take my eyes off her photograph. A lovely young woman, blonde and smiling, she was a leader as well: student body president, a Morehead Scholar, Phi Beta Kappa, the list goes on. In her short life she had volunteered in Durham and Ecuador, Egypt and Ghana. Every life is infinitely precious. Eve, as Carson’s high school principal said, “was one of the young women who could change the world.”
The mother of a college student myself, I reached out to pray for Eve and her family and the students at UNC, hoping they will somehow find comfort, hardly able to imagine the pain they must be feeling. And then it occurred to me that less than a year has passed since the Virginia Tech shootings, when 32 students were killed. Just last month, at Northern Illinois University, a gunman shot five people. And only one day earlier, Lauren Burke, an Auburn University freshman, died of a single gunshot wound.
After the Virginia Tech shootings, the Rev. Bob Edgar, General Secretary of the National Council of Churches, asked some important questions, and today they remain as urgent as ever. “My pastor’s heart breaks for the families of those who died today,” he said. “….Faith leaders have spoken up continually about the epidemic of gun violence in our country. Despite repeated calls from faith and community leaders to Congress and presidents nothing ever seems to get done to stem the tide. How many more will have to die before we say enough is enough? How many more senseless deaths will have to be counted before we enact meaningful firearms control in this country?”
What are we waiting for?
Jean Grasso Fitzpatrick, L.P., a New York-licensed psychoanalyst and a member of the American Association of Pastoral Counselors, sees couples and individuals in her private practice. A layreader in the Diocese of New York, she is the author of numerous books and articles on the spirituality of relationships, including Something More: Nurturing Your Child’s Spiritual Growth and has a website at www.pastoralcounseling.net.