Online Archives

By Shaun Lane
UMConnection Staff

As people around the world paused last month to remember those who lost their lives to gun violence in Newtown, Conn., and elsewhere, the Baltimore-Washington Conference joined with other denominations to push for stricter laws that would prevent certain people from acquiring assault weapons.

In light of the most recent tragedies, the National Council of Churches, together with the United Methodist Church and other interfaith partners in the Faiths United Against Gun Violence coalition, called on churches to observe a Gun Violence Prevention Sabbath weekend. Although an approximate number is not yet available for 2012, it’s estimated that 30,000 lives were lost to gun violence in 2011.

A National Institute of Justice survey in 1994 found that civilians owned 192 million guns. Two years later, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms reported that about 242 million firearms were owned by civilians or available for sale. That number rose to about 259 million in 2000 and about 294 million in 2007. The latest year’s statistics are not yet available.

“The tragedies in Newtown, Conn., Aurora, Colo., and Portland, Ore., have reminded our nation and our world once more that the proliferation of semi-automatic and other assault weapons is a threat to the life, health and safety of our nation,” said Bishop Marcus Matthews, the episcopal leader of the Baltimore-Washington Conference. “We must take a stance against gun violence, while also addressing the pervasive role of addiction and mental illness in crime.”

Bishop Matthews also challenges every United Methodist church in the conference to partner with a school in its community to assist in providing any guidance that a child might need when faced with the threat or lure of gun violence. Fred Crider, a retired clergy of the conference, he said, was so moved in the days following the school shooting that he issued a plea, calling on his brothers and sisters in Christ to lead the cry for change.

“I 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,” said Crider, who has written to various Congressional members from Maryland to urge them to pass an assault weapons ban. “This has got to change. If there was ever a time to feel outrage, is it not now?”

On the state level, Governor Martin O’Malley said he will likely introduce a gun control package in the upcoming legislative session; he reiterated his opposition to assault weapons like the one used in the Newtown massacre. O’Malley said he has directed staff to look at three areas for possible legislation: limiting the type of guns that are allowed in Maryland, restricting access to guns by the mentally ill, and looking at ways that the state can make schools safer.

State Senate President Thomas V. Mike Miller Jr. said he would be receptive to a stronger state gun control law and has already spoken with O’Malley about the possibility of a gun package. House Speaker Michael E. Busch said his chamber will also look closely at gun control legislation.

West Virginia U.S. Senator Joe Manchin III, who is pro-gun rights, told the New York Times that “everything should be on the table” as gun control is debated in the coming weeks and months.

“It is time to admit that the vast availability of assault weapons poses a threat to the welfare of our people and that a ‘culture of violence’ is beginning to rival ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ as enduring values of this nation,” Matthews said.

“Now is the time to hear the call to a new sanity. Now is the time to commit ourselves to following the model of living that Jesus represents. He is the one who leads us along the path of life and hope.”