Sermon for Gun
Violence Sabbath Sunday
March 16, 2014
by The Rev. John
Kirkley
This weekend, faith communities across the nation are gathering
to remember those who have lost their lives to gunfire, to pray for those
whose lives have been forever changed because of the loss of a loved
one, and to continue the discussion on how communities of faith can work
together to help reduce gun violence. In 2010, guns took the lives of more than
30,000 Americans in homicides, suicides, and accidental shootings. In any two-year period, the number of
Americans who die from gun violence exceeds the total number of American deaths
in the Vietnam War.[1] We are suffering an epidemic of gun violence. Some 50 denominations, including The
Episcopal Church, are part of Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence, which has formed
to respond to this epidemic.
While tragedies like the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary
School in Newtown make headlines, we tend to overlook the trauma of everyday
violence affecting children, especially poor children of color, in too many of
our communities. On average, eight
young people under the age of 20 are killed by gun violence every day in the
United States.[2] Firearm homicide is the second leading cause
of death (after motor vehicle accidents) for people in this age category,[3]
and the leading cause of death among young African-Americans; nearly one in
four American teens have witnessed a shooting.
One of those teens is 19-year-old “Hayden,” who lives in
East Oakland.[4] Her world began to unravel in 2008, when her
mother was shot in the leg by a random bullet, leaving Hayden to care for her
two younger siblings. A week later, an
uncle who lived with the family was shot and killed. He was the third uncle she has lost to gun
violence since 2001.
Hayden describes her response, “I was traumatized, I was
hurt. I didn’t know how to feel. It’s someone you see everyday, and you don’t
get to see him anymore.” She then
recounts the recent deaths of five other friends. Another stray bullet killed a
sixteen-year-old girl, who was like a sister to her. Gunfire also killed a fifteen-year-old friend
as he walked through a nearby park.
Another young man was shot multiple times as he went to the store.
These were random shootings, and they left Hayden in a
constant state of terror. She fears
gunfire. She no longer walks around her
own neighborhood. She would leave class to visit her uncle’s gravestone. Not one of her teachers asked her about the
disappearances. She dropped out of high
school, unable to cope with the well of grief that overwhelmed her.
Hayden has since found refuge in the East Oakland Youth
Development Center, where she earned her GED and now works as a tutor. She is one of the survivors of an epidemic
of violence that is saddling a whole generation of children with the burdens of
depression, anxiety, and post-traumatic stress disorder. In 2012 there were 2,000 violent crimes
committed per 100,000 people in Oakland, compared to a national average of 387
violent crimes per 1,000 people.
Children are growing up in a war zone that leaves them isolated,
traumatized, and vulnerable to repeating the cycle of violence.[5]
In 2008, the U.S. Department of Justice surveyed thousands
of teenagers about how often they were exposed to sexual assault,
domestic battery, child abuse, and community violence. More than 60% reported at least one incident
in the previous year, and 40% percent were victims of two or more violent
acts. 10% were victimized five or more
times.[6] This
epidemic of violence disproportionately affects communities of color, but it
is, in fact, everywhere.
Recognizing and healing this trauma is an important step in
interrupting the cycle of violence.
Javier Arango is a beautiful example of what is possible. The night of his high school prom, Javier
was caught in a blast of gunfire that left him a paraplegic. Terrified of being in a wheelchair in a tough
neighborhood, he secured a bullet-proof jacket and a gun, and joined the Border
Brothers gang. He began to self medicate
with drugs and alcohol, trying to ease the memory of his shooting and the
shooting deaths of three close friends.
Eventually, at the age of 22, Arango quit gangbanging and
found help from Catholic Charities of the East Bay. It was there that he learned he was suffering
from PTSD. According to Arango, “There
is basically a war going on in Oakland.
It’s not that you leave the war.
You always live inside the war.
You’re not going back home.”
But instead of being a soldier and victim in this war,
Arango has become a kind of front line paramedic. Now 24-years-old, Arango works at Catholic
Charities as a youth specialist leading “trauma circles,” gatherings of
high-risk adolescents to confidentially talk about how to cope with their
experiences of violence. He is helping
young people to realize that such violence isn’t normal and that they deserve a
better future. “I want the government to
make more programs to help out more and to understand that we’re all human
beings,” he says. “We just happen to
live in a cold world, in a messed-up world, in a dirty world. But we deserve all the opportunities that
anybody else deserves.”
We are at the beginning of a movement that understands the
toxic stress that children experience in Oakland, and other communities like
it, as a public health issue. Gun
violence is part of a larger structure of racism and poverty that produces
extreme manifestations of trauma, similar in its effects to survivors of mass
shootings and war. Arango knows his
place in this movement. “It’s like I’m putting
my brick into building a better community,” and he goes on to note that when he
was growing up there were no “original gangsters,” or wiser people who had
recovered from the trauma and could provide guidance to a better way of
life. “We didn’t have people like that,”
he said. “But there’s me now. I could do it.”
What is our place in this movement? How are we rebuilding safe, healthy
communities where everyone is treated like a human being? What can we do? Faiths United to Prevent Gun Violence
advocates common sense policy prescriptions that should be enacted without delay.[7] The first is to require universal criminal background
checks for gun purchases. The current
system only applies to about 60% of gun sales, omitting online sales and
purchases at gun shows. In 2012, some
6.6 million guns were transferred without a background check on the
purchaser. A national survey of inmates
found that nearly 80% of those who used a handgun in a crime acquired it in a
private transfer.
Since the Brady Law was passed in 1994, about 2 million gun
sales have been blocked, and about half of those blocked attempts were by
felons. Background checks save lives,
and states with universal criminal background checks have experienced dramatic
decreases in gun related domestic violence, suicides, police murders, and guns
exported to other states. Nine out of
ten Americans support universal background checks, including 75% of NRA
members.
Secondly, we need to ban the sale of military-style assault
weapons and high capacity magazines.
Such weapons were developed solely for the purpose of killing as many
people as quickly as possible in military combat. There is no justification for allowing our
neighborhoods to be turned into war zones.
The shooters at Virginia Tech,
Tucson, Aurora, Oak Creek, and Newtown all used high capacity magazines that
would have been banned if the Brady Law ban had not been allowed to lapse in
2004. There is overwhelming public support for the
ban, including more than 70% of gun owners.
A related measure is to strengthen the laws punishing gun
trafficking. Today, criminals can easily
buy guns from unlicensed dealers or with the help of “straw purchasers” who
pass the background check. Those who
traffick these guns are generally only prosecuted for paperwork violations,
which carries the same punishment as trafficking chicken or livestock. We
need to empower law enforcement to investigate and prosecute straw purchasers,
gun traffickers, and their criminal networks.
These are common sense proposals with broad public
support. Their enactment would be a
good first step in limiting the epidemic of gun violence that is traumatizing a
generation of children; children like Hayden and Javier, who are our neighbors,
kids in our own schools, congregations, and communities. It is the least we can do for them.
Measures also need to be taken to strengthen the
infrastructure of our public health and public education systems, and reform
the criminal justice system to reintegrate rather than stigmatize former
felons, reduce recidivism, and end the so-called war on drugs that
disproportionately criminalizes men of color for the nonviolent possession and
sale of drugs. Gun violence and mass incarceration of men of
color are related phenomenon. We need to
address both issues together to break the cycle of violence.
The PICO National Network, a faith based community
organizing project, has initiated the “Lifelines to Healing” campaign to do
just that.[8] I’ll be attending an organizing meeting to
learn more about the campaign this coming Thursday. Mary Balmana, a member of our parish, is
serving on the recently created diocesan Task Force on Gun Violence Prevention
as well.
Gun violence prevention is not about ideology. It is, finally, about people like Hayden and
Javier. It is about recognizing them as
our brothers and sisters in Christ, as part of the world that God so loved that
he sent his Son to heal it. In keeping
with our baptismal promise to strive for justice and peace and respect the
dignity of every human being, let us continue the conversation about how we,
individually and together, can be lifelines of God’s healing love for the
world.
[2] The Brady Campaign averaged three years of data from
death certificates (2008-2010) and estimates of emergency room admissions
(2009-2011) available via the CDC’s National Center for Injury Prevention and
Control’s Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System, http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html. Data
retrieved 12/28/12.
[3] National Center for Injury Prevention and Control,
Web-based Injury Statistics Query and Reporting System (2007 (deaths) and 2008
(injuries)), http://www.cdc.gov/injury/wisqars/index.html. Calculations
by Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence, 2009.ii
[4] The following stories and quotes about “Hayden” and
Javier Arango are from “Life, Death, and PTSD in Oakland” by Rebecca Ruiz,
published in the December 11, 2013 edition of the East Bay Express.
[5] Ibid.
[6] Ibid.
[7] Go to http://faithsagainstgunviolence.org/legislation/ for background on these policy prescriptions.
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