WASHINGTON (CNS) — The nation’s leaders “must engage in a real debate about needed measures to save lives and make our communities safer,” said the chairman of the U.S. bishops’ domestic policy committee.
Such debate is essential because “violence in our society will not be solved by a single piece of legislation, and many factors contribute to what we see going on all around us,” said Bishop Frank J. Dewane of Venice, Florida, chairman of the U.S. Conference of catholic Bishops’ Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development.
His Nov. 7 statement was issued in response to “recent and horrific attacks” in the country, referring to the mass shooting Nov. 5 at the First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas, that left 26 people dead and 20 others wounded, and the Oct. 1 the mass shooting in Las Vegas during an outdoor concert that left 58 people dead and hundreds of others injured.
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“For many years, the Catholic bishops of the United States have been urging our leaders to explore and adopt reasonable policies to help curb gun violence,” Bishop Dewane said.
The Las Vegas and Sutherland Springs gun massacres “remind us of how much damage can be caused when weapons — particularly weapons designed to inflict extreme levels of bloodshed — too easily find their way into the hands of those who would wish to use them to harm others,” he said.
Bishop Dewane said the USCCB continues to urge a total ban on assault weapons, “which we supported when the ban passed in 1994 and when Congress failed to renew it in 2004.”
Other efforts the bishops support include measures that control the sale and use of firearms, such as universal background checks for all gun purchases; limitations on civilian access to high-capacity weapons and ammunition magazines; and a federal law to criminalize gun trafficking.
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A gun by itself will kill no one, it needs to be in the hands of an evil person to kill. The problem is not keeping guns from people, it’s keeping evil people from guns. Also, why is it that so many people who are upset over the children killed in these massacres either keep silent or support the greatest massacre of children in the world, legalized abortion. This is especially true of clergy of all faiths.
There are already plenty of laws that should have stopped this man from being able to purchase any type of gun, but they were not enforced. His dishonorable discharge alone should have been enough, but was missed. Start by enforcing the laws that exist. Unfortunately deranged/evil people will always find a way to carry out their plans. If not a gun, a bomb or a vehicle to plow through a crowd. It’s part of the human condition.
Canadian “CBC” Radio field journalists were in tears in Texas last night on air, seriously frustrated at not being able to find one single Texan among the several interviewees (many with close personal relationships with victims, including a Baptist Minister from the next town who insisted he could only speak on Bible knowledge) … NONE would refute guns or admit the connection of guns with mass shootings!
The studio and field reporter had both been at Sandy Hook and assumed it would be the tipping point in our national debate about gun control, at least machine guns. They assumed dead children would matter more that they apparently did in hindsight.
It is like a code of some kind among mostly white men (and I am one) that excuses the obvious tool seducing so many outcasts to the evil outcome which we now all seem to expect will keep repeating.
Other countries have solved this and still allow gun ownership. I myself own a few guns, and none are the automatic assault kind because that is not the purpose for having a gun in my opinion.
We already have plenty of gun control laws and they have been proven to not work. Please read John R. Lott’s books before professing an opinion on this topic. Chicago has strict gun laws and high murder rates. NH has no significant gun laws and the lowest murder rates. Please educate yourself and don’t encourage legislators to try to take weapons or other equipment from law-abiding citizens. The TX church congregation should have been armed themselves.