I think that Pima County Sheriff Clarence Dupnik very eloquently gave us all something to think about when he said, "When you look at unbalanced people, how they respond to the vitriol that comes out of certain mouths about tearing down the government. The anger, the hatred, the bigotry that goes on in this country is getting to be outrageous. And unfortunately, Arizona, I think, has become the capital. We have become the mecca for prejudice and bigotry."
Our lack of gun laws, the ease with which anyone can purchase (legally or illegally) any weapon of his/her choice, and now the ability to legally carry concealed weapons leave all of us with the possibility of looking down the barrel of a gun during any disagreement or misunderstanding. We are not the Wild West anymore, populated by cowboys and settlers, but we act like it by the way we arm ourselves. We are supposed to be a civilized society, but we too often aren't civil to each other when we have disagreements.
It's time to look at this situation that we have created. It's time to face up to the fact that we live in a violent country that does shoot, and sometimes kills, its politicians.
Is this freedom? I don't think so. I want the freedom to go to the grocery store and not worry if I will get killed. I want the freedom to talk to my congresspeople and not worry that I will be gunned down.
I want change. I want Congress to stand up to the NRA and develop some laws that make the United States a safer and less violent place to live. And I want all of us to monitor our speech, even when we are in heated debates. We don't need to speak of targets and crosshairs when we're talking about politicians during elections, but rather we need to discuss ideas without inflammatory rhetoric. Commentators especially need to heed this.
Please read Jim Wallis' blog below. He calls on us to be peacemakers, builders of just communities, and he calls on us to do some soul searching, to understand our role in this. Let this awful shooting awaken us to the climate of hate and violence, anger and bigotry, that exists in our country. Let's look for solutions.
I was with Gabby just a week ago, as both of our families celebrated the New Year’s holiday at a retreat in South Carolina. I count her as a friend (and there are countless others who feel the same way). She is somebody I always looked forward to seeing again, and she’s a great hugger, especially for a member of Congress. Last week, we talked about her very tough and close election this fall, which she won by only a few thousand votes in one of the most divided states in the nation, where the political rhetoric has become more and more poisonous and personal — much like the rest of the country. Gabby is always engaging, but never polarizing, and was the least likely person to be targeted by an angry and unhinged man. But she was. Her husband, Mark Kelly, is a navy pilot and an astronaut, and my boys remember him coming to the retreat’s kids program to tell them what it’s like flying through space. He now sits at her side in a hospital room as Gabby fights for her life. We all hope and pray for her recovery.
This horrible tragedy must now become an important American moment. And, it is our job to make sure it does not just become another quickly forgotten event. As the county sheriff in charge of the criminal scene in Tucson said on Saturday, this must be an occasion for national “soul searching.” Part of the tragedy is that while this shooting has shaken the communities Gabby is a part of — Arizona and Washington, D.C. — violent tragedies like this are far too common in our country and our world. When a shooting would occur in the neighborhood of Columbia Heights, in which I lived for 30 years, we would always look towards bringing the individual or individuals who committed the act to justice. But we never stopped there. We always asked: What is our role in this?
A central calling for Christians is to be peacemakers. Peace, we understand, is not simply the absence of current conflict, but the presence of a just community. In the midst of tragedy and violence, I believe this means every Christian must ask themselves: “How am I responsible?” What more can we do to bring peace to this world as the Prince of Peace has called us to do? What are the situations and environments that allow this kind of hate and violence to grow? How can I not only stop conflict, but also be a part of bringing about a just community that displays the positive presence of peace?
As many have already said, we must honor this tragic event and Gabby’s national service by reflecting deeply on how we speak to and about one another, and how we create environments that help peace grow, or allow violence and hatred to enter. Many of us who would never consider violence of the fist have been guilty of violence in our hearts and with our tongues. We need to be able to relate to others with whom we disagree on important issues without calling them evil. The words we say fall upon the balanced and unbalanced, stable and unstable, the well-grounded and the unhinged, alike.
It can be easy to simply turn the station when violence breaks into our world. It can be even easier to do so when it happens in another community, not ours. But it would be an even greater tragedy now for the violence against Gabrielle Giffords and the others wounded and killed in Arizona to become another passing event — a blip on the social media screen of our lives — rather than something which changes us. Instead of viewing this shooting as something that happened to other people in another place far away, this could be a time to tie us closer to our neighbors across the country. To that end, we are inviting our bloggers and readers to reflect with us all this week on God’s Politics, to offer thoughts, prayers, confessions, and hopes, all aimed toward our national healing. As we continue to pray for Gabby and the families of all those who were so brutally attacked, let the soul searching begin.
Jim Wallis is the author of Rediscovering Values: On Wall Street, Main Street, and Your Street — A Moral Compass for the New Economy, and CEO of Sojourners. He blogs at www.godspolitics.com. Follow Jim on Twitter @JimWallis
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