The World Council of Churches has joined “the urgent cries of churches and church people for real remedies to the gun violence” in the US in the wake of two mass shootings over the weekend which have left some 29 people dead and dozens injured.
Twenty people were killed and dozens more injured when a 21-year-old gunman opened fire in an El Paso shopping centre on Saturday morning while less than 24 hours later a gunman in Dayton, Ohio, fatally shot nine people and injured at least 26 before he was killed by police. Those shootings come just a week after a gunman opened fire at a garlic festival in Gilroy, California, killing three.
Shoes are piled in the rear of Ned Peppers Bar at the scene after a mass shooting in Dayton, Ohio, US, on 4th August. PICTURE: Reuters/Bryan Woolston
Rev Dr Olav Fykse Tveit, general secretary of the WCC, said in comments published by the organisation that the church body stood “with our sisters and brothers in the US in these hours of grief and confusion and, along with our condolences, we join the urgent cries of churches and church people for real remedies to the gun violence there.”
“We know,” he added “that the issue of guns in the US borders on larger issues of violence, race, and political polarization. It is not just a legislative issue, though it is also that. Churches have a key role to play in both education and advocacy.”
In the US, Jim Winkler, president and general secretary of the National Council of Churches in the US, said there was “no reason for anyone to own assault weapons which were created for use in war”.
“There is widespread public support for requiring licenses to own guns, for a ban on assault weapons, and for background checks,” he said. “The only reason elected officials refuse to take action in the face of desires of the voters is because they fear the power of the gun lobby.”
Winkler added that the “combination of readily available weapons of mass destruction and a toxic white racist nationalist ideology is a recipe for disaster”.
‘If we cannot confront these two evils, far greater violence and social disruption awaits our nation.”
Meanwhile, at the Vatican on Sunday, Pope Francis expressed his solidarity with the victims of the shootings and said all three attacks had targeted “defenceless people”.
