I used to drop my two young sons off at our neighborhood elementary school each morning. They would run down the hill to the playground to join their friends. I sat in my car and watched them until the bell rang announcing the beginning of the school day and both my sons passed over the threshold into the school building.
I assumed they were safe once they were inside. It was a different time.
After that, we moved as missionaries to Europe and our sons
attended European schools.
As I try to contemplate the killings in Uvalde TX that left 19 children and two teachers dead along with the perpetrator, my mind is overwhelmed, and my heart is does numb at the horror of the carnage. I think about my two little boys entering Woodland Elementary School in Mansfield OH.
I think about the trust I placed in that school, the city that ran it,
the elected State and national officials whose job it was to do all that was
humanly possible to protect my sons so they could grow into the fine adults
they have become. I trusted my community
and my nation to cherish and protect my little boys.
Then I think about the 19 dead children and two dead
teachers in Uvalde TX, and I cannot understand why we allow this to continue to
keep happening.
I use the word “allow” intentionally. We are prone to become dispirited and think
this cannot change. We wring our hands
and ask ourselves what could possibly be done to stop this.
There are proven demonstrated ways to reduce mass killings. Simple logic suggests some actions.
My grandfather gave me a single-shot-bolt-action rifle when
I was a boy. It could be lethal, but it
would take a long time to kill 21 people in a school in Texas or 10 people in a
Tops store in Buffalo.
Later in life, I visited the Cu Chi Tunnels Memorial Park in
Vietnam while on a mission assignment teaching Vietnamese pastors. They had a shooting range at the tunnels
where you could purchase ammunition and fire a weapon used during the war in
Vietnam. I purchased a cache of
ammunition, and the attendant loaded it into a Kalashnikov. I pulled the
trigger. Before I even realized the gun was firing, I had spent all my
ammunition. It was a costly 2 seconds or
so.
Even a weapons novice like me can see this as a cautionary
tale.
In the face of these inconceivably horrific shootings, the
worst thing we can do is simply accept this as an inevitable part of life in
America and go on about our business.
James writes: Whoever
knows what is right to do and fails to do it, for them this is sin
(4:17). When the lives of children are
at stake, it is important to give things the proper name.
Jim Kelsey
Executive Minister-American Baptist Churches of
New York State
