The torrent of gun violence headlines and statistics has led many to simply stop seeing them. I believe we are, as a nation, weary to our bones from all this death. We have, as a society, become victims of what Malcolm Gladwell famously called “the problem of immunity“, in which being overwhelmed by massive amounts of information leads one or more people to be unable to process it, rendering it functionally invisible. It is, perhaps understandable. We have become, to borrow a phrase from Pink Floyd, “comfortably numb.” Once in a while, national attention is provoked by either a slow media cycle or a large number of casualties. But in the aftermaths of even these tragedies, despite overwhelming support for universal background checks for gun sales (even among NRA members), there has been no significant and lasting national response. Legislators seem incapable of compromise, and the frontlines of the culture war are bombarded by extremists who alternatively demonize gun owners and gun reform advocates alike. Is there anything to be done? Is there no way to make any change in a system of sustained violence that costs upwards of 30,000 lives every year? My claim is that my fellow faith leaders can bridge the divide between gun owners and gun reform advocates. This is a moral crisis, and it requires a moral response. Whereas elected officials and those employed to sway their decisions are driven by the market, faith communities of all stripes are driven to maintain the dignity of the Divine Image in every human life. Faith reminds us of our common humanity, can provoke that most human of responses to the needless deaths of our fellow citizens: compassion. Americans of all political leanings — gun owners, gun law reformers, mental health advocates — wish for the fulfillment of American Scripture, which includes in its promises a basic right: life. The great civil rights activist Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel once claimed that, when confronting great societal rupture, there is “no time for neutrality,” that: ...one of the lessons we have derived from the events of our time is that we cannot dwell at ease under the sun of our civilization, that man is the least harmless of beings. We know this is true. We must allow our numbed hearts to be shaken from a false sense of security and reclaim our roles as partners in a noble American impulse, based in the very basic societal value of mutual obligation. And, if we need more motivation than our national prophetic values, we might do well to consider the statistical reality — if we do nothing — that our streets, our churches, our children are all on the line.
The torrent of gun violence headlines and statistics has led many to simply stop seeing them we are weary to our bones from all this death. We have, as a society, become victims of what Malcolm Gladwell famously called “the problem of immunity“, in which being overwhelmed by massive amounts of information leads one or more people to be unable to process it, rendering it functionally invisible We have become comfortably numb This is a moral crisis, and it requires a moral response We must allow our numbed hearts to be shaken from a false sense of security and reclaim our roles as partners in a noble American impulse, based in the very basic societal value of mutual obligation