After death, holiness? Responding to the scourge of gun violence

RABBI JAMES BENNETT

We must have become numb to gun violence.

Hardly a day goes by without another mass shooting in a school, shopping center, place of worship or public square. We dont even know what qualifies as a mass shooting these days.

Deaths attributable to weapons of war — high-powered rifles designed to kill the maximum number of people in the minimum amount of time — have become an epidemic.

That multiple innocent people daily are murdered, maimed or injured is unthinkable, and the number of single killings by handguns and rifles — murders, suicides and accidents — has grown so large that most are hardly even reported by the media.

The false belief that the courts and our elected officials are obligated to protect a so-called Second Amendment right” to bear arms has been elevated to a right to murder other human beings.”

Instead of protecting the innocent lives they were elected to protect and defend, many legislators and judges are intent on protecting the power and influence of gun advocates and the corporate influence of the National Rifle Association.