Each week we feature one of the many ministries that make up the work and witness of All Saints Church. This week we feature the Gun Violence Prevention Task Force with this article by Virginia Classick.
The Gun Violence Prevention Task Force, formed after the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School and supported by a Vestry Resolution, works to educate parishioners and the wider community about gun violence, and to provide opportunities for advocacy and action. One goal of the Task Force is to delineate the various forms of gun violence and preventive strategies specific to each, rather than talking about gun violence in general. Preventing mass and school shootings, for example, requires very different strategies than preventing gun suicide (which make up nearly 2/3 of gun deaths), or unintentional shootings by children. The correlation between domestic abuse and gun violence requires distinct interventions.
The Task Force also encourages people to frame and talk about gun violence prevention in a way that can lead to building common ground as the only potentially successful way forward. All Saints encouraged “both/and” thinking rather than “either/or” thinking, and nowhere is this more crucial than in discussions of gun violence prevention. One of the major barriers in making progress in reducing gun violence is that this issue is almost always presented and discussed in polarized terms. In individual discussions and in print and broadcast media we frequently hear the false dichotomy of “pro-gun/anti-gun”, or that “both sides” need to be heard. Debates and arguments about this issue — often heated — keep this movement paralyzed. While individuals may be anti-gun, the movement to prevent gun violence is not. In order to move forward, the movement needs both gun owners and non-gun owners who are committed to reasonable, sensible measures that can keep guns out of the hands of those who should not have them in order to reduce what in many cases are preventable gun tragedies.
On June 24 the Task Force will observe National ASK Day. The ASK Campaign, developed in part by the American Academy of Pediatrics, encourages parents to ask, when they send a child to another home, whether that home has an unlocked gun. After a discussion about the ASK Campaign in Parent Culture two years ago, a parishioner began to ask other parents this question. She was horrified to learn that her children had often visited a home with an unlocked, loaded gun under a bed. She said that she would never have known this except for the ASK Campaign discussion. ASK materials will be available outside of Scott Hall and at the Featured Ministry table. We also encourage those who work with children and families to think about ways in which these materials can be distributed or made available.
Everyone can do something to help reduce gun violence. Sign up for Action Alerts and/or Facebook pages of one or more of the gun violence prevention organizations, such as Women Against Gun Violence, an LA-based organization, the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, or Moms Demand Action, or (Episcopal) Bishops Against Gun Violence, of which our Bishop, John Taylor, is a member. We hope that you will visit our table on June 24th!
