Beyond Thoughts and Prayers
“Boycott the N.R.A.! “Ban assault rifles!” “Improve background checks!” “Raise the purchasing age to 21!”
Those are some of the proposed solutions from one side of the gun violence argument in response to another tragic shooting at an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas.
The other side? “Arm the teachers!” “Provide better education and training for gun owners!”
Maybe repealing the 2nd Amendment altogether is the answer?
Not one of those proposals will work.
I’d be remiss in my pastoral writing not to address the reasons for such acts of senseless violence.
We can certainly anticipate more controversy of what could have been done, what should have been done. And you can bet that those who offer their thoughts and prayers will be shamed once again, too.
Then-Presidential candidate Kamala Harris after a mass shooting several years ago Tweeted, “Thoughts and prayers are not enough. We need action.”
Rep. Ilhan Omar (D-Minn.) said: “No more thoughts and prayers.”
When Senator Ted Cruz Tweeted “Heidi & I are fervently lifting up in prayer the children and families in the horrific shooting in Uvalde,” Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez wrote in response: “You can do more than pray. Faith without works is dead.”
CNN reported that the phrase “thoughts and prayers” had reached “semantic satiation, the phenomenon in which a word or phrase is repeated so often it loses its meaning.”