A World free from Gun Violence
As people of faith rooted in commitment to justice and love of our neighbors, we know a tree by its fruit. The fruit of America’s obsessive veneration of guns is mass death and unending grief. This lethal culture, from laws written by arms manufacturers, to an idolatrous embrace of guns by many churches, to our cultural depictions of weapons, is rooted in a soil of white supremacy, toxic masculinity, and political corruption. Even a pandemic hasn’t stopped the tide of gun deaths.
We can’t do this any more. As people of faith, we denounce the violence, racism and misogyny that has built American gun culture and commit to building a better society rooted in our values of love & care for our neighbor.
We’ve seen slaughter in Atlanta, motivated by faith-rooted, misogynistic anti-Asian racism; in Boulder, where what appears to be a mental health crisis turned deadly through lax gun laws; and in seven mass shootings that took place over seven days in March. We live in a society where risking murder is part of everyday reality.
We don’t have to live like this. We can become a nation where no life is lost to a bullet. To build this life-affirming community, we must do more than offer thoughts and prayers. We must dismantle the white supremacy, toxic masculinity and political corruption at the root of American gun culture. We commit to acting in our places of worship and community institutions to break down the root causes of this culture, and we commit to forcefully advocating for policy changes that will keep us all safe. A better world is possible through our labor and solidarity.