Baptist Spirituality

By Rev. Dr. Joe LaGuardia

I’ve been praying and waiting to craft what I need to say… And I finally have a word to share.

The horror and trauma that gun violence victims live through every time there is a public or high-profile shooting, such as that of Charlie Kirk’s and the students killed the same day in Colorado, has now multiplied.

The initial horror we face is the gun violence itself: For some it means years of enduring headlines of senseless (and in some cases avoidable) violence followed by flaccid rhetoric from leaders and politicians who only leave us with empty hands and aching hearts by day’s end.

There is now, in the wake of Kirk’s death, a newly evolving horror with which we must contend: The fact that some people are treating gun violence unequally.

Speaker of the House Mike Johnson recently stated that Kirk’s death was a “turning point for the nation.” I’m sorry, Sir, but that turning point came for thousands of families since Columbine in 2000. You were just slow to see it perhaps. I’ll give you the benefit of the doubt.

We have been calling for unity, common sense legislation, and a move to go beyond thoughts and prayers for years. That some people are finally responding now because it was “their guy” who died tragically and needlessly is, for us, too little too late at the cost of a child’s father, a wife’s husband, a faithful friend, and an endearing son.

The very pro-life ethic many of my friends and I have been preaching and writing about, that encapsulates both personal responsibility and gun reform, has been vilified, belittled, and rhetorically gerrymandered to the margins. At this point, rather than open ears to this call for reform, however, there is –from the mouths of some leaders, at least — a call for war against opposing parties or ideologies, as if one party or ideological camp has an exclusive monopoly on violence.

When I hear of Charlie Kirk’s age and family, I think back to the time I stood on stage in Coral Springs just seconds before delivering my eulogy for my friend who got gunned down at Parkland High School.

I looked out at those hundreds of mourners, then back to my friend’s wife and little girl, a girl who was now growing up without a father. I was the only one in the room who knew what it felt like to lose a father to a gun, and I spoke to his wife and his daughter as if they were the only ones in the room.

The number of victims whose eyes I imagine are saturated by tears and anger and sorrow and resignation, but perhaps at some points of time, enlightened by glimmers of faith, hope, love, or eternity since that funeral have only exponentially grown.

Mr. Speaker, I pray that this a turning point in the nation’s history, even if it is one that you recognize this late of date. And I pray that the nation will move to a more united stance for a thoroughly consistent pro-life ethic in which every life, no matter the one who wears the skin, is treated as made in the image of God – worthy of respect and dignity, regardless of party or platform, whether friend or, in the words of our Lord, enemy. Jesus died on a cross to show us the price of counting every life as precious and worth his sacrifice. We ought to do the same by sacrificing empty rhetoric and, worse, the bad habit of treating gun violence and our response to violence qualitatively differently.