One of the surprising headlines, to some people, out of the COVID-19 pandemic is that in addition to toilet paper and hand sanitizer, people have been stocking up on guns.
Guns?
Environmental justice organizer Emma Lockridge started off her Compassion, Peace & Justice Training Day talk telling viewers how COVID-19 looks in her South Detroit neighborhood.
Halfway through her opening statement on Wednesday’s edition of “Standing Our Holy Ground,” the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program’s year-long webinar series about how the church can respond to gun violence, Nicole Hockley of Sandy Hook Promise cited some extraordinary achievements by her group.
The latest webinar in a series on how churches can address American gun violence highlighted the need to refocus discussion on the communities most deeply affected by the problem and the societal pressures that may lead to shootings.
This past Sunday, the first Sunday of Lent, participants in the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program’s southern border travel study seminar helped with the service and lunch.
A group of 24 Presbyterians and guests traveled to Central America in the past two weeks with the Presbyterian Peacemaking Program to learn more about the conditions in Latin American countries that make people choose to travel, usually on foot, to the United States border for the faint hope of a better life in the U.S. They also heard from migrants who had been returned to their home countries and the perils they faced after they returned.
Heidi Yewman graduated from Columbine High School in Littleton, Colorado years before the 1999 massacre that guaranteed the school a place in the history of gun violence in the United States.
A decade ago, the advocacy group Heeding God’s Call to End Gun Violence helped to shut down a controversial gun shop in Philadelphia.
With the involvement of many different faith communities, “we brought nine months’ worth of public attention to this particular gun shop, which was selling lots of guns that ended up in crime and so on,” said Bryan Miller, the group’s executive director. “We eventually basically embarrassed ATF (the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) into closing the gun shop.”
Gun violence prevention can be woven into various aspects of church life, from worship and pastoral care to Bible study and youth groups. But the potentially divisive topic warrants some preparation, thought and sensitive handling, according to experts featured in the latest webinar in the “Standing Our Holy Ground” series.
