UM voices regarding the Newtown shooting
By Fred Crider
Dear Friends and Family:
Diane and I are simply outraged at the murder of 20 little children, their teachers and staff in Newtown CT, last Friday morning. I think our Lord who was indignant over merely keeping children away from him, (Mark 10: 14) must now grieve and be outraged too.
We have wept with grief and wrestled with powerful emotions and swirling thoughts, and have concluded that our nation as a whole and each one of us as individual Christians and American citizens, must do something now. This has got to change. If there was ever a time to feel outrage, is it not now?
Consequently I have written Congressman Dutch Ruppersberger (D. MD 2nd Congressional District …I was his pastor at Timonium UMC), and MD Senators Barbara Mikulski and Ben Cardin, urging them to take courage and stand up against the NRA and pass, at least, an assault weapons’ ban. I don’t mind people owning hand guns for protection, and rifles or shot guns for hunting, but I don’t see why anybody needs a semi-automatic military style weapon capable of firing @100 rounds per minute!
I agree with “Morning Joe” Scarborough on MSNBC (a former Republican Congressman and NRA honoree), who said this morning that we cannot allow things to go on any further, with business as usual, allowing gun manufacturers to proliferate such weapons for sale to anybody who wants one. He also assailed Hollywood’s violent movies, and violent video games, because they desensitize our whole culture to violence, particularly our children and youth, especially those who like the young killer, have psychological issues (in this case apparently, Aspergers disease.)
He concluded by saying it’s not all the NRA’s fault, nor all Hollywood’s fault, nor all video game makers fault, but implied that it’s our fault, for not being outraged enough to demand something decisive be done. He called on us not to allow the recognition that doing one thing may not solve everything, from at least doing one thing that will help something.
I intend to speak as many gun owners I know about my outrage, (fyi, I am a gun owner, Dad’s 410 ga. shotgun and Mossberg .22.), and witness about the same thing to church members as well. As Edmund Burke (English diplomat, 1729-1797) put it: “The only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good {people} to do nothing.”
The Rev. Fred Crider is a pastor who serves at Salem UMC in Upper Falls.
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