Tag Archives: gun violence

religious news

They’re going to church this Sunday

Tragedy quite often can beget courage.

Such is the case in Sutherland Springs, Texas, a tiny community near San Antonio that is reeling from the monstrous act of evil that killed 26 people and injured 20 others. Some of the victims were children; one was an infant; yet another was an unborn child.

First Baptist Church was rocked to its core. The community is in utter grief.

The gunman walked into the church and methodically murdered about 7 percent of Sutherland Springs’ population.

But here’s the courageous element: They’re going to have church on Sunday. The First Baptist Church family will gather in another location; its sanctuary is uninhabitable and well might have to be destroyed and rebuilt.

This is one measure of how courage in the face of unspeakable tragedy and evil presents itself.

May the congregants feel the love of an entire nation as they gather to worship.

national news

Military must face a ‘systemic’ problem

Congress is weighing in on an important issue that appears to have been a primary cause of the Sutherland Springs, Texas, massacre.

The monster who opened fire this past Sunday at First Baptist Church was able to purchase the weapon he used because of a failure by the U.S. Air Force to log his criminal background.

There’s this statement from House Armed Services Committee Chairman Mac Thornberry, a Clarendon Republican: “News that the Air Force failed to notify the FBI of (the shooter’s) military criminal record is appalling. … Furthermore, I am concerned that the failure to properly report domestic violence convictions may be a systemic issue.”

And The Hill reports this: “The Senate Armed Services Committee will conduct rigorous oversight of the Department’s investigation into the circumstances that led to this failure,” committee Chairman John McCain, R-Ariz., said in a statement. “It’s critical that each of the military services take the steps necessary to ensure that similar mistakes have not occurred and will not occur in the future.”

Read The Hill story here

The shooter was given a bad conduct discharge from the Air Force. His exit was due to his assault against his then-wife and her infant child. The Air Force failed to notify federal authorities of the charge, enabling this bastard to purchase the assault weapon he used to murder 26 parishioners at First Baptist Church.

It appears to be a long-standing failure by the military. The issue is drawing considerable attention by lawmakers.

It’s too early to tell whether they are doing enough, or certainly whether they will do enough to crack down on the carnage that is erupting across the land.

I hope Congress and the president will do more. At least, though, we have begun a discussion about one element of gun violence.

State news

Community not likely to ever recover from tragedy

The Sutherland Springs, Texas, church massacre seems significantly different from other such tragedies.

It involves the size of the community. The town has about 400 residents. That’s it. The Sunday morning shooting killed or wounded 46 people. That’s about 10 percent of the entire town’s population.

I am not belittling other cities’ tragedies. Las Vegas, Orlando, Charleston all have suffered terribly, too. Family members in those larger communities terribly, just as they are in Sutherland Springs.

I am inclined to believe, though, that Sutherland Springs’ collective grief will last forever, or at least until the final surviving community member passes from the scene.

I have swallowed hard several times as I’ve watched the news reporting from Sutherland Springs. What is most heartbreaking is to hear from those who knew the victims and to hear from them how “everyone knows everyone” in Sutherland Springs.

Three generations of a single family, eight people, died in the shooting. The 14-year-old daughter of the First Baptist Church pastor and his wife also died. An 18-month-old infant was among those who died at the hand of the monster who opened fire.

Just how does a community recover from this degree of madness?

Too many communities already have been tagged with a title none of them ever welcomes: the place where gun-related violence erupted. The larger cities do have the opportunity to move farther away from their collective pain.

The tiny town of Sutherland Springs — with a single blinking traffic light — likely has seen its identity changed forever.

It is all simply heartbreaking in the extreme.

military news, State news

Air Force messed up on shooter’s record

More than two decades ago, the 1995 Texas Legislature considered a concealed handgun carry bill. I opposed it with great passion.

The Legislature enacted it. Then-Gov. George W. Bush signed it into law. Over the years, I grew to accept the law, although I never have totally endorsed it.

But get a load of this: The Texas concealed handgun carry law did its job as it regards the Sutherland Springs shooter while the U.S. Air Force failed to do its job.

The loon who killed those 26 worshipers in Sutherland Springs was denied a concealed carry permit in Texas because of a criminal record check the state performed on him when he made his application.

Air Force misfires

But the U.S. Air Force, which sent him packing with a bad conduct discharge, didn’t tell the National Criminal Information Center about a court martial conviction in connection with an assault charge against his wife and her child. That failure to report enabled the shooter to purchase legally the rifle he used to massacre those First Baptist parishioners, including several children.

I’m not going to brag about Texas’s concealed carry law. I still am not a huge fan of it. Still, it hasn’t produced the kind of street-corner violence that many of us — including yours truly — feared would occur.

I am a bit heartened, though, that the state law worked. Texas denied this madman a permit to carry a gun under his jacket.

If only the Air Force had done its job, too.

Maybe it could have prevented this tragedy. Just maybe …

State news

Guns and mental health both played a part

Donald Trump believes the hideous massacre in Sutherland Springs, Texas, is a “mental health issue,” not a “guns issue.”

I’ve been trying to process the president’s statement, which he delivered in Japan. I am coming up empty with that notion.

You see, I happen to believe the lunatic shooter who killed 26 people at First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs had no business packing the weapon he used to commit the carnage.

In other words, “mental health” and “guns” aren’t mutually exclusive issues as they relate to this horrific episode in our nation’s history.

The shooter was an Air Force veteran who received a bad conduct discharge after he assaulted his wife and young child. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott has pointed out that the gunman applied for a concealed handgun permit, but was denied the permit because of his criminal record.

And that begs the question: How did this sicko get his mitts on an assault rifle? And, yes, I expect to hear the argument that will come forth that bad guys will obtain guns no matter how many laws we have on the books.

The debate on this hideous deed will commence fully in due course. The nation will grieve and a community will bury its victims. I don’t want to wait too long before this debate gets under way.

The president can lead that debate by acknowledging what I believe is painfully obvious about what has transpired. It is that guns need to be part of the discussion topics, right alongside the issue of mental health care.

These issues are not mutually exclusive.

State news

Shooting decimates S. Texas town

Leave it to The New York Times to put the Sutherland Springs, Texas, massacre today in perspective.

The newspaper notes that the unincorporated town had a population of 362 according to the 2010 census. With an estimated 25 people killed today by a gunman who opened fire at First Baptist Church, the town is likely to have lost about 7 percent of its population in one despicable act.

I am going to refrain from identifying the shooter by name, as has been this blog’s policy for some time. He’s dead. It’s not known if the police shot him or if he took his own life. My reluctance to identify him is because I choose instead to focus on the deed and the victims.

Texas Department of Public Safety officials have said he is a Texas resident.

Texas town is shattered

What now?

Federal, state and local police are going to sift through the gunman’s history to learn about him and try to ascertain why he would launch a Sunday morning church service rampage that reportedly took the lives of several children. The president of the United States, Donald Trump, sent his love and prayers from Japan, where he is attending meetings with foreign leaders. Texas Gov. Greg Abbott is en route to Sutherland Springs. Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton has offered support from his office to aid in the probe of this terrible event.

And, yes, the minute we know about this lunatic’s motivation, we can expect the debate to recommence on ways to curb gun violence of this horrific type.

I welcome the debate when it occurs as soon as is humanly possible.

The immediate reaction — as in how we must respond during this calendar day — must center on prayers and love sent from all over the world to a tiny Texas town that is shattered by an all-too-common form of grief.

State news

Have we lost our collective minds?

I have refrained over many years from lamenting about the state of our national sanity when monstrous acts of evil explode before us.

Sadly, I am thinking we have flipped. We’ve become certifiably mad as a nation. Our nation has been gripped by the vise of mourning, grief and tragedy.

Another massacre occurred today in Sutherland Springs, a small town east of San Antonio. As I write these few words, I am hearing that at least 20 people are dead and many more are wounded in a shooting at a Baptist Church. The shooter is dead; it’s not clear whether the cops got him or he offed himself.

My goodness, I am utterly at a loss to explain this.

The litany of massacres has become too gruesome to bear. Newtown, Littleton, Aurora, Orlando, Charleston, Las Vegas and now Sutherland Springs. OK. I’ve missed some. But you get the point.

These communities now will be identified forever by the tragedy that has befallen them — and the rest of us.

And yes, the debate will erupt yet again over the cause of this monstrous act once we learn the identity of the shooter.

I am officially afraid for our nation

national news

‘Bump stock’ becomes new gun focus

Maybe it’s just me but I rather doubt many Americans had ever heard of “bump stock” before this past weekend when a madman opened fire on a crowd of 22,000 spectators attending a country music festival in Las Vegas, Nev.

A bump stock, we have learned, is a device that turns a semi-automatic weapon into a machine gun.

The shooter in Las Vegas had attached a bump stock to a semi-auto rifle and created an automatic weapon, a killing machine that took the lives of 58 people and injured more than 500 others.

Now the debate has been joined. And guess what: There seems to be some actual momentum building that could make bump stocks illegal. Congressional Republicans, who usually are allied with the National Rifle Association in opposing any effort to regulate guns in any fashion, now are calling for an examination of this device.

More good news? Sure. The NRA is softening its opposition, agreeing that Congress should debate the legality of bump stocks.

Hell has frozen over!

As The Hill reports: “The NRA believes that devices designed to allow semi-automatic rifles to function like fully-automatic rifles should be subject to additional regulations,” NRA CEO Wayne LaPierre and executive director of the NRA Institute for Legislative Action Chris Cox said in a joint statement.

Who would have thought such a thing could come from the NRA?

Might there be a gun law breakthrough?

I believe it’s a baby step toward taking some needed legislative steps regarding gun violence. I hope eventually that Congress will be able to be more comprehensive in its approach to curbing this kind of massacre. It likely will need some push from powerful public interests — such as the NRA.

If it’s against the law to own a machine gun, then how is it that bump stocks remain legal?

national news

Let’s get real: mend, not end, 2nd Amendment

I’m hearing a lot of chatter throughout my social media network about how the United States should end the carnage of gun violence.

Las Vegas’s tragedy has awakened us yet again to this horrifying aspect of modern American society. Fifty-eight victims, all attending a music festival, were shot to death in an act of insanity by a monster perched on the 32nd floor of the Mandalay Bay Hotel and Casino. Five hundred-plus more were injured; some of them are in critical condition.

The debate has been joined throughout many social and other media.

I am hearing significant chatter about how Australia managed to clamped down on firearm ownership in the wake of a 1996 mass shooting. The Aussies have been massacre-free ever since. Other countries prohibit the purchase of firearms. Let’s model our firearm policy after those countries, the argument goes.

I happen to believe in the Second Amendment, awkward phrasing and all. I believe it says that Americans have the constitutional right to “keep and bear arms.” I get that.

However, I also believe there must be a solution to improving the Second Amendment. How can we preserve its principle while legislating within its framework stricter laws that make it illegal for civilians to own fully automatic assault weapons like the one used in Las Vegas by that madman? Isn’t there a solution to be found somewhere, somehow, by someone smart enough to draft a law that maintains the Second Amendment principle of keeping and bearing arms?

As my friend Jon Mark Beilue has noted in a wonderful column published today in the Amarillo Globe-News, other amendments in the Bill of Rights have limitations. He cites the First, Fifth and Sixth amendments. The Second Amendment, though, remains untouchable mostly because of entrenched political interests groups — I’m talking about you, National Rifle Association, among others — who bully and pressure members of Congress to keep their hands off that amendment.

Check out Beliue’s essay here.

Can we get past the overheated rhetoric that flares up when these tragedies strike? If we can, then perhaps we can find a solution to mend the Second Amendment. Don’t tell me that such a reach is beyond our collective grasp.

national news

President delivers consolation

Dear Mr. President …

There. That’s how you do it, sir. You go to a stricken community and you speak solemnly and you offer words of comfort, sorrow and support.

The residents of Las Vegas, indeed the entire nation, are grieving. You spoke to our collective grief today in the wake of the madman’s onslaught Sunday night.

Yes, you surely heard the criticism of your Puerto Rico visit, where millions of other Americans also are grieving — although for entirely different reasons. They faced nature’s wrath in the form of Hurricane Maria. They are hurting, but your remarks there seemed strange, petty and callow. A couple of those photo ops seemed, uh, rather weird. You might want to consider explaining what the paper towel-tossing event was supposed to symbolize.

You then had the chance today deliver another message to our fellow Americans in Las Vegas. I am heartened that you stepped up and said what needed to be said.

I’ll give you a pass for not talking about gun control today. That wasn’t your mission and I understand that. I hope you get around to engaging seriously with all Americans on this matter, even as many of them already have begun debating that issue among themselves.

Today was your time to fulfill your role as comforter in chief. You did that today in Las Vegas. You were right to say, “We cannot be defined by the evil that threatens us or the violence that incites such terror.” Mr. President, we can be defined instead by the heroes of all stripes who rushed to the aid of others stricken by the madman’s evil act.

This is what presidents do, sir. Circumstances sometimes compel you to perform these extraordinary duties. You did so today, Mr. President.