The Right Reverend William O. Gregg, Ph.D.
After Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School,
Part I: Where is the hope?
“There are seventeen children dead,” the student said pointedly to the news reporter. A poignant expression of grief, anger, and shock at the violence in Marjory Stoneman Douglas in Parkland FL. We know some of both what did happen and major red flags that were missed because of negligence, incompetence, and a dose of sheer ignorance in some who could not or did not know what they were seeing. Wrapping our heads and hearts around this tragedy is an enormous struggle. It is a heart-rending tragedy. We need to remember that at the heart of tragedy is something that did not need to happen.
Of course, there is the usual debate in the follow-up to this tragedy. And there is the usual waffling of politicians. There is the usual monstrously irresponsible, even obscene, blather of Wayne LaPierre and the NRA announcing yet again that the “only way to stop a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun.” A lot of teeth gnashing in a liberal v. conservative game of blame and nonsense. But this time, the youth are not going to let us get away with that. No more avoidance. But a clarion demand for action.
So, can there be any hope that anything appropriate and constructive will be done? We all know that there are constructive things, necessary and right things, that can be done. That ought to be done. But there is money and business and 
politics that “must” be considered. We are painfully aware of where that has taken us. Nowhere – because the money and the business and the politics make sure that nothing is ever done. The misreading of the Second Amendment forces the conclusion that the “right” to bear arms is an absolute one and more important than 20 dead children and teachers in Sandy Hook, or 58 dead in Las Vegas, or 17 dead children and faculty in Parkland.
So where is the hope?
Is there any hope? I do see hope. I see it in the results of excellent parenting and in an excellent school in Parkland, FL that has produced extraordinarily insightful, thoughtful, determined young men and women who are speaking truth to power with all of their youthful power, determination, commitment, and sense of right. Their courage, born of both their youth and naiveté, manifests in pointedly asking the right questions, of calling out we adults to be adults for and with them, of believing that mass killing really does not have to be accepted and they we can and must act to prevent this ever happening again. There are solutions, and they are not going to stop pressing for them until those appropriate, necessary actions are taken.
The Gospel demands of us nothing less than to give our all with them and for them to enact constructive solutions to the problems of guns and of violence in our society. The Gospel calls us to do the right thing. To speak truth to power and demand that the necessary things be done, including the curbing of the “right to bear arms” at precisely that point where that right is a threat to the welfare of the state and the well-being of its people. Our Baptismal vows commit us in the name of Jesus to the respect and care of everyone – and that includes appropriate political action, to stand with the students of Marjory Stoneman Douglas High, and to do what is right and necessary to fulfill the Constitutional mandate to “provide for the general welfare” of the people. Now. And nothing less.