A Pastoral Response to School Shootings: “If not us, who, if not now, when?” by Fr. Rian Adams

“Why?” is the first question I ask myself!

I cannot even count how many times I’ve heard the question, “But why?” since April 1999, when twelve students and one teacher were murdered at Columbine. 

In the wake of another school shooting, this time at Robb Elementary School in Texas, I hear that question… When these massacres continue to occur I ask myself—or maybe I’m asking God—“ My God, why?”

19 children. 2 teachers. Dead. Gone. Forever. We weep for what their futures could have given our world, and we weep for how many children those teachers could have changed. 

I tried to open social media this morning only to close it quickly because everyone has a prescription for fixing school shootings.

“Teachers need to carry guns!” some said. I asked my son, who is 12 and just completed 6^th grade today, “Brody, how would you feel if your teachers carried guns?” He said, “It would scare me. They aren’t trained special operators that know lockdown protocol.” My son’s 12-year-old friend said, “How would we know some crazy teacher wouldn’t lose it and turn it on us?” 

Others call for confiscating all guns, including what many of us might have in the tops of our closets… an old single-shot 20 gauge that our great-grandfathers gave our grandfathers that they, in turn, gave us. 

I do not have the perfect answer.

But it is heartbreaking to me that some people take to the mountaintops to defend guns and their “rights” before the blood of 19 little kids is even dry on their classroom floors. That is a spiritual problem—a problem with the soul.

One wound I’ll always carry is an atrocity that I witnessed when I served as a military chaplain on a deployment to Afghanistan—only three people know the story. Because of that incident, it is extremely difficult for me to read about the suffering of children at the hands of evil men. 

But today… today was different. Today I made myself push far beyond my comfort zone. I made myself sit at my desk after everyone left the office and read… then I began to cry—then weep. 

Despite how difficult it was for me, I wanted to know how many school shootings occurred in the past ten years since Sandy Hook, when 26 people were massacred—twenty just little children between six and seven. The numbers were flabbergasting—over 300.

Then I wondered how many shootings occurred in the past twelve months… 46 school shootings leaving 36 dead and dozens more injured. 

We live in an age where a disturbed young man can turn eighteen and the next day walk into a store and buy a rifle with 375 rounds of ammunition, then return and buy another rifle two days later. This is in Texas, a state that, last September, passed a law that anyone over 21 can openly carry a firearm with no permit, no training, and no background check. The Governor of Texas called it the “biggest and best” gun law of the 2021 legislative session.

It’s not this way everywhere. 

In March 1996, a shooting occurred in the UK, leaving 15 children and 1 teacher dead. Since then, there have been zero school shootings in the UK. Lawmakers were willing to ask hard questions and brave people decided not to sacrifice any more children. 

My bishop wrote a letter to our diocese that quoted the prophet Ezekiel; the prophet says, “I will cleanse you from all your impurities and from all your idols. I will give you a new heart and put a new spirit in you; I will remove from you your heart of stone and give you a heart of flesh.”

I pray for a revival of “love your neighbor as yourself.” I’m fortunate to know some people who are willing to love others as themselves. I even know some brave people who would happily take that 20 gauge out of the back of their closet and give it up to save one life. I’m sure that spirit would make our great-grandfathers and our grandfathers proud of us! 

And Jesus said to Peter, “Put up your sword. All who live by a sword will die by a sword.” – Matt 26:52

Wisdom is better than weapons of war. – Eccl 9:18

Father Rían +

P.S. The picture below hit me hard…  It likely invites reflection…