WILL CHANGE COME NOW?

“Enough!”

Maybe Pope Francis said it best in an angry reaction to the school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, that left 19 students and two teachers dead on May 25.

But many in this country — including the Catholic bishops — have been saying “Enough!” for years and nothing has changed in our gun laws or attitudes. Maybe the calls for change are louder this time because of the racist shooting rampage in Buffalo that left 10 dead and happened May 14. Both were perpetrated by young males with AR-15s. 

But the carnage at Robb Elementary School in Texas — broken bodies, ripped open by bullets from a madman’s assault rifle, bodies that could only be identified by their parents’ DNA — leaves you sickened, with a sense that we are never going to change, that our society is forever broken.

“Sadly after Sandy Hook (the 2012 school shooting in Connecticut that left 26 dead, including 20 children), we didn’t see that change that many people thought, that this was going to be the last straw,” said Dennis Poust, executive director of the New York State Catholic Conference (NYSCC), which represents the state’s bishops on public policy. “There is no way society is going to tolerate little children in elementary schools being gunned down. But as it turned out, society did tolerate it. 

“That is why there is a sense of hopelessness among many people and maybe, part of the role of the Church is to remind everyone that there is always hope. While we may have despair and we may have a sense of hopelessness, if we turn to God in prayer and turn that prayer and sense of outrage into policy maybe something can change.”

The Catholic bishops of this country and state have been calling for change and stricter gun laws and access for over a decade. In 2013, the bishops of New York State, led by Cardinal Timothy Dolan, backed the NY SAFE Act, which banned assault weapons and high-capacity magazines in the state and created the “red flag” law, which is supposed to take away temporarily or keep guns out of the hands of people that are a danger to themselves or others. The law, which passed even though the state Senate at the time was controlled by Republicans, was former Governor Andrew Cuomo’s response to the Sandy Hook shooting.

In 2019, at the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops fall assembly, Bishop Frank J. Dewane, at the time the chairman of the Committee on Domestic Justice and Human Development, called for expanded gun control in this country in a speech titled “Responses to the Plague of Gun Violence.” In it, Bishop Dewane said the bishops supported common sense measures to address the violence which included: “a ban on assault weapons; universal background checks; a federal gun trafficking bill; regulations on sales of handguns; improved mental health interventions; safety measures; and an honest assessment of violent images and experiences in our society.” The bishops also supported extreme risk protection orders (ERPOs, also known as red flag laws) and licensing handguns.

And in the wake of the Uvalde and Buffalo shootings, New York Governor Kathy Hochul wants to raise the minimum age of when you can buy guns such as AR-15s in this state from 18 to 21. This is a move the NYSCC supports as well.
“This is something that the conference thinks makes a lot of sense and I think that it is something a large part of society can take a look at and say, ‘This will help,’ ” Poust said. “Because if you look at the school shootings — Sandy Hook, Uvalde, Parkland, Columbine — all are pretty much done by teenagers or young men between 16 and 20. These are all teens and young men, and even the Buffalo shooter which was not in a school, was 18. Obviously that is not a coincidence; the sample size is getting too big.”

For all of the specific policy changes on gun control the bishops have proposed and supported there is still the perception that they are not doing enough, compared to their advocacy against abortion, for example.

“Part of that is that we are asked about (abortion) all the time. A lot of times when we do speak out on euthanasia or the death penalty or restrictions on guns, that doesn’t make headlines,” Poust said. “Could we do more as a Church? Of course. I think we could always do more. I think that the bishops do see this as a pro-life issue and I do think, at least I pray, that their prophetic voice on this will be heard because they have been calling for gun control for many years. But you know what, we have been calling for an end to abortion for many years pretty strongly and that hasn’t happened. Bishops can speak, and they do, but that doesn’t always translate into policy.” 

Legislation — there once was an assault weapons ban in this country which expired in 2004 — has generally been stymied by one end of the political spectrum. But Poust added the rabid gun mentality that grips many parts of the country underscores the fact that most Americans want sensible gun laws and don’t want to worry every day that their kids might be gunned down in third-grade math class.

“I struggle myself to understand the gun-worship mentality of some in society and I say that trying not to be judgmental,” Poust said. “My father was a hunter, he owned guns. I hunted as a teenager but it seems like there has been almost a fetishization of guns and I don’t think that is too strong a word. 

“What I do know is the vast majority of people in this country, including Republicans, I believe, would support some common sense measures. For example, most people support universal background checks and red flag laws and I compare that to the abortion issue in this way: If you polled people on abortion (and say), ‘Are you pro-choice or pro-life?’ If that’s the question, more people say they are pro-choice consistently. Then when you start digging deeper and ask them, ‘Would you support a restriction after the first trimester?’ Would you support a restriction based on the sex of the child?’ Then people say, ‘Yes.’ Even people that identify as pro-choice support restrictions that are even more restrictive than what Roe v. Wade allows.

“In the same way, I think people who say they are pro-Second Amendment, it doesn’t mean that they believe there should be no restrictions. Unfortunately, our politicians tend to play to the extremes, which is why we can never seem to find common ground. Oftentimes in the case of guns, the extreme carries the day because of the power of the National Rifle Association through campaign contributions that they provide.”
 
Poust also believes there needs to be more than a change in laws.

“That will help but there has to be some sort of a healing of the sickness that is in our society of hatred and violence and this problem of these angry, young men and boys who are somehow radicalized as killers. Whether its spiraling through the wormhole of the dark web or violent video games or any number of things that may be contributing factors, we have got to address that problem,” he said. “They are always going to be able to access guns; we can make it harder, but there are always going to be shootings. You are never going to stop them all until we have a fundamental changing and healing of the sickness that is rampant in our country right now.”

One thing Catholics can do is make their voices heard.

“The only thing that speaks louder than money in politics is votes, and if citizens rise up and tell their elected officials that they want them to work together, Democrats and Republicans, to come up with reasonable laws that the majority of the people can accept and get behind that would be a good start,” Poust said.

“But we also need prayer. People say thoughts and prayers are ineffective and maybe it would seem that way, but the prayer that we would need isn’t for people to put down their guns, it’s really for a healing of almost this demonic evil that seems to be seeping into our country. There is just so much anger, so much lack of respect and a growing lack of respect for human life.

“When the bishops talk about abortion being the pre-eminent issue, that is part of why. Once you lose that respect for the child in the womb, loss of respect for other forms of human life follows. We need to restore respect for human life, and prayer is an important part of that. Never be embarrassed to offer thoughts and prayers, but you also have to follow it up with action.”