Senseless Carnage in Boulder, Colorado

In the summer of 2012 I attended a course at Ring Lake Ranch in Wyoming. I spent a couple of days in nearby Yellowstone National Park first, then joined a group of Christians interested in faith and the environment at this retreat centre. It was an exceptionally beautiful setting and the speaker and company were stimulating. 

I was the only Canadian, but that didn't matter. That is, until we gathered for worship in the chapel one morning. A c ouple of participants arrived visibly shaken after hearingof a massacre at a movie theatre in Aurora, Colorado, close to where they lived.

We prayed for the victims, the 12 who died and the 70 who were injured.I'll confess that I was unsettled and even angered at what like passivity to me regarding the loss of life amongst those people in the chapel. Surely to God we all understood the insanity of allowing virtually anyone to be armed with assault weapons. In the case of this young assailant he also used tear gas and rigged his apartment with explosives to create mayhem when it was searched. 

Yesterday a young gunman opened fire in a grocery store in Boulder, Colorado, about 55 kilometres from Aurora. The victims were innocent people going about their everyday lives. Many Americans have expressed sorrow, and the flag at the White House is at half mast, but where is the will to bring about change?

One Christian writer and pastor I follow on Twitter, Brian Zahnd, commented that gun violence is the issue that tempts him to move to another country. Shane Claiborne, another Christian leader 

Shane Claiborne

@ShaneClaiborne

We lose 100 lives a day to guns in the US

Last year, guns killed over 40,000 people.

In my lifetime, we’ve had more people killed with guns here in the US than in all the wars in US history combined. If you’re not concerned about gun violence, please don’t say you’re pro-life.

President Biden has already stated that he will immediately initiate changes to existing gun laws, including more thorough background checks. He has a far greater challenge in altering the deeply disturbing obsession with "the right to bear arms" which leads to this carnage.