friends. i know everybody has been hearing from loved ones. just shock. i got a note this morning from a friend in mississippi. his pastor wrote the congregation yesterday and said, as i write these words, the sun is rising on may 25th, 2022. another day of mourning in america after another mass shooting at another elementary school. as we pray yet again for those whose lives have been torn us under by a troubled soul wielding a deadly weapon, it seems important and necessary to me to say as a christian pastor that we try to find reasonable ways to reduce gun violence, and that is not political. it is moral. the church needs to have a moral compass which can tell the difference between that which is politically partisan and that which is moral. otherwise, our fear of being political may, at times, make us fall silent concerning matters which we should not be silent. as martin luther king jr. once widely said, the day we fall silent about the things that matter is the day our
senate testimony and i ve been talking about this atlantic article that fallows wrote in 81. had nothing to do with slaughter. had everything to do with after vietnam. they were saying, why were the guns jamming? why were they heavy and horrible to use? m-16s were absolute disasters. so they had, i think, stoner who designed the ar-15 testify. the ar-15s are killing machines, smaller caliber. when it hits flesh, it goes apart. it destroys. it s just a killing machine. it s lighter. it s easier to use. it is easier to carry. it is designed to be the most effective killing machine to kill human beings, tom. this is what this is what greg abbott and ron desantis and, i guess, mitch mcconnell
time, be it a train or of course the hallowed words spoken by todd beamer, i ll never forget his words on 9/11, let s roll. and then you have the other situation, an active shooter where you point out really the best piece of advice is to run. yes. i was just going to all of our reactions are going to be situation dependent. when you re in a confined space like a train, what they did was absolutely appropriate and heroic and admittedly lucky given that the terrorist had some problems with the gun jamming. both guns jamming. but in active shooting cases, a lot of the training that we do, get the heck out. in other words, it used to be if you remember columbine, students were told to stay put. that leaves them a sitting duck. it s all going to be sitting