New USA Today oped: Both parties should come together to help reduce gun violence
My latest on this epidemic and this complicated issue
Today I have a piece in USA Today on the epidemic of gun violence in our country. This is a problem that will require both parties to come together and work together to help to solve. It also reveals America’s moral and spiritual crisis:
Here are some key excerpts.
The problem:
On Friday night near Cleveland, Texas, police say, a man with an AR-15 shot to death five of his neighbors, including a 9-year-old boy. On Monday afternoon, police found seven people dead, including two missing teenage girls, at a home in the small town of Henryetta, Oklahoma.
As a nation, we are only weeks removed from the shooting at a church school in Nashville, Tennessee and the shooting at a bank in Louisville, Kentucky. And those are only crimes that have captured national attention. In cities across the country, citizens live in fear of their lives, besieged by violence on the streets and in homes, workplaces, schools and churches.
The Covenant School shooting in Nashville was personal for our family. We lived in Nashville for 10 years and love that growing metro with a small-town heart. A dear friend’s children attend Covenant School. A colleague at Texas Baptist College, affiliated with the seminary where I work, lost a nephew. And my wife was part of a prayer group of moms that included the Covenant pastor’s wife.
What we need:
Republicans should ask themselves what measures they could offer that might create more friction between guns and the people intent on committing acts of murder. A few Republicans in the Senate supported red flag legislation last year and 19 states, including conservative states such as Indiana and Florida, have red flag laws. Tennessee Gov. Bill Lee has urged his fellow Republicans in the state legislature to follow suit.
Democrats might acknowledge what is possible. The United States is not Australia. We have a Second Amendment that isn’t going anywhere. So are they willing to vote for protective measures such as Tennessee Republican Sen. Marsha Blackburn’s school safety bill, which would provide federal grants to help public and private schools be protected by police officers?
And might the media be part of the solution? Are journalists willing to call attention to the daily violence in communities around the country, often in cities that boast of stringent gun laws but where other causes of crime are sometimes ignored by left-wing prosecutors?
And recognizing we also need more than laws:
Even as we encourage our leaders to shape public policy, we also need to look deeper than our state capitols and Washington, D.C. and acknowledge a deep spiritual sickness. Laws can do much to curb violence, but they can’t do everything.
America is in need of serious moral and spiritual renewal. Our founders understood that our unique experiment in freedom will hold up only if there is a corresponding spiritual foundation. As John Adams said, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
You can read the whole thing here: