{"id":7041,"date":"2017-10-02T19:12:50","date_gmt":"2017-10-02T23:12:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/?p=7041"},"modified":"2017-10-02T19:18:20","modified_gmt":"2017-10-02T23:18:20","slug":"yes-now-is-the-time-to-discuss-gun-control","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/2017\/10\/yes-now-is-the-time-to-discuss-gun-control\/","title":{"rendered":"Yes, NOW IS THE TIME To Discuss Gun Control"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"police<\/a>I don’t know about you, but I’m sick and tired of the “thoughts and prayers” rhetoric every time there’s a mass shooting in America, which is quite a lot.\u00a0 I’ve written too many messages to the community and too many blogs (see list below) on the topic of gun violence, and here we are, still thinking and praying. Now is the time to ACT to stop the madness.<\/p>\n

Yes, of course, we do pray for the victims… this time for the unfathomable 59 dead and more than 500 wounded in Las Vegas.\u00a0 They were there to enjoy themselves at a concert, a festival of joy and love, and now they are gone, or maimed, or damaged for life.\u00a0 Yes, of course, our thoughts are with them…. and with ourselves; thoughts of being caught in similar violence have become inescapable, a national mental health crisis that our leaders are doing nothing to alleviate.<\/p>\n

Presidential Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders lectured us — We The People, the people she’s supposed to be supporting — when she said that now is “not the time” to discuss getting a grip on gun violence in our nation.\u00a0 It’s never the time, it seems.\u00a0 Unless the shooter is Muslim, in which case it’s always time to discuss banning the entire Muslim population from travel into the United States.\u00a0 (Don’t blame the NRA, said Sanders, blame the shooter.\u00a0 Yes, of course.\u00a0 Remember that next time the shooter’s name is Ahmed, please.)\u00a0 And it always seems to be time to urge ordinary citizens to arm themselves to the teeth — “good guys with guns” v. “bad guys with guns” in the NRA Gospel.\u00a0 Good guys with guns were helpless in Las Vegas, however, since the shooter was high up on the 32nd floor of a hotel a quarter mile away from the killing field, mowing down concert goers with some kind of powerful machine guns — he had an arsenal in that hotel room, God knows how he got all those guns up there.\u00a0 Nobody on the ground could defend themselves from the fatal hailstorm of bullets.\u00a0 How is it that people can get guns like that in America?<\/p>\n

But the President’s spokesperson said now is not the time to ask such questions.\u00a0 Really?\u00a0 If not now, when?\u00a0 When was the time after Newtown, after Columbine, after Virginia Tech, after Aurora, after Charleston?\u00a0 The list goes on and on.\u00a0 “Don’t politicize” is another way of saying “forget about it.”<\/p>\n

NOW IS THE TIME to take action.\u00a0 A majority of Americans really do want at least some minimal controls on who purchases guns and what kinds of guns people can buy.\u00a0 While some of us might prefer a complete ban, in fact, the political realists who are the majority simply want some political spine to achieve some minimal restraints to save lives.<\/p>\n

And, by the way, for all of those who proclaim that they are “pro-life,” NOW is the time to stand up and be counted on one of the most serious life issues we face.\u00a0 The wanton destruction of human life through gun violence in this nation shows how hollow most of those politically expedient moral proclamations are.\u00a0 If political leaders want to save human lives, they can start by restraining the availability of guns.<\/p>\n

Taking action NOW to begin to slow down (note: not stop, that will take a long time) the prevalence of gun violence is a deeply moral imperative for our nation and communities.\u00a0 We need to hold lawmakers accountable for their lack of action, for their corruption in devoting more of their loyalty to the NRA than to their own people.\u00a0 Politicians who place guns ahead of lives violate their most basic duties to protect the people they represent.<\/p>\n

Today is the International Day of Non-Violence.\u00a0 I sent the message below to the campus community:<\/em><\/p>\n

Dear Students and Colleagues,<\/p>\n

Today is the 2017 International Day of Non-Violence<\/a>.\u00a0 We cannot escape the terrible irony of this day in the wake of the horrific news from Las Vegas.\u00a0 With 58 now dead and more than 500 people injured in an unfathomable massacre perpetrated by one lone gunman, we may tend to feel helpless, hopeless, or at a loss to comprehend how or why such tragedies continue to plague our society.<\/p>\n

I have no good answers but I do know this:\u00a0 we must persist in our commitment to be people of peace, to confront and resist those whose violence in words and deeds shatters the essential compact of a good society. \u00a0We must demand the exercise of greater responsibility by media who, too often, sensationalize and glorify violence in ways that some tragic souls find compelling and worthy of imitation.\u00a0 We must insist that our leaders walk back from violent rhetoric — whether taunts toward other nations or violent jokes at the expense of political opponents,, every time a leader speaks with violence some twisted mind feels encouraged. \u00a0We must resist our own urges to respond to every provocation with anger, to think that the only solution is to arm ourselves in the belief that more guns will make us more safe.\u00a0 More weapons means more violence.<\/p>\n

We must find a way as a nation to come to grips with the clear and urgent need to have sensible, effective controls on guns.\u00a0 The litany of mass shootings that we have to repeat with so much frequency is a disgrace to what is supposedly an advanced civilization.<\/p>\n

At Trinity, our entire mission emphasizes the life of the mind, the belief that through knowledge we can make life better for ourselves, our families and communities.\u00a0 We do this with a spiritual center that is rooted in the Catholic and Christian traditions of love and service to humankind, belief in the dignity of the human person and respect for human life.\u00a0 The outrageous gun violence that afflicts and infects our nation is a direct challenge to our institutional values intellectually and spiritually.<\/p>\n

Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., once said, \u201cNonviolence means not only avoiding external physical violence but also internal violence of spirit.\u00a0 You not only refuse to shoot a man, but you refuse to hate him.\u201d<\/p>\n

Mahatma Ghandi, whose life and work are the inspiration for today\u2019s International Day of Non-Violence, wrote:\u00a0 \u201cNonviolence is the greatest force at the disposal of humanity. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of humanity… We have to make truth and nonviolence not matters for mere individual practice, but for practice by groups and communities and nations. That, at any rate, is my dream. When the practice of nonviolence becomes universal, God will reign on earth as God reigns in heaven.\u201d<\/p>\n

On this day devoted to the idea of non-violence, let us offer what prayers we can for the victims of the violence in Las Vegas and in so many other places.\u00a0 And let us also pray that we can have the courage to stand up even more firmly to insist on non-violent solutions to the ills that plague our world, to demand that our leaders take the option for peaceful solutions to national and international threats, and that we come together as a human community to reaffirm our commitment to peace as the most essential element of the good society we seek.<\/p>\n

With thanks for your devotion to the ideals of Trinity\u2019s mission,<\/p>\n

President Patricia McGuire<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Here are just some of the pieces I have written on gun violence and mass shootings:<\/strong><\/em><\/h3><\/span>\n

December 14, 2012<\/a> after the shootings at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, CT<\/p>\n

December 17, 2012<\/a> in the Huffington Post on Sandy Hook<\/p>\n

December 19, 2012<\/a> joining letter of college leaders after Sandy Hook<\/p>\n

September 16, 2013<\/a> after the shootings at the Washington Navy Yard<\/p>\n

December 14, 2013<\/a> after shootings at Arapahoe High School in Colorado<\/p>\n

January 26, 2014<\/a> after a shooting at the Columbia Mall<\/p>\n

June 18, 2015<\/a> after the Charleston church shooting<\/p>\n

October 1, 2015<\/a> after Umpqua Community College Shooting<\/p>\n

June 12, 2016<\/a> after Orlando<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

We must end the gun violence. Now. Delay is immoral.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":51,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[509,6],"tags":[1495,1318,564,888,1903,1268,1109,1904,1905],"class_list":["post-7041","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-civil-human-rights","category-media","tag-aurora","tag-columbine","tag-gun-control","tag-gun-violence","tag-las-vega-massacre","tag-navy-yard-shootings","tag-sandy-hook","tag-sarah-huckabee-sanders","tag-virginia-tech"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/51"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7041"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7041\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7041"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7041"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.trinitydc.edu\/president\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7041"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}