Jewish Relationships Initiative

We often forget or become numb to how commonplace the daily carnage has become.

And because of our numbness, we require a mass casualty event to jolt our senses and awareness.

Sadly, this means that the lives of all the individuals murdered go unnoticed. The tragic loss of children becomes part of the daily process, cold statistics not unlike the cold bodies left in the wake of this national nightmare.

We must accept that although many consider shooting a sport (hunting, target practice, etc.), the purpose of a gun is to serve as a deadly weapon. A gun is used to kill. And outside the hunter’s blind or shooting range, most guns ultimately aim at people, and people die.

There are many reasons for the prevalence of guns and the ensuing gun violence. But at its core is a fundamental rejection of a basic premise of our society, namely, we are a nation of laws. If those laws are not applied rigorously and uniformly, then grievance arises, and the need to take the law into our own hands ensues.

The mass shooters and street thugs flout the law, and the victims ultimately pay the price of a society unable or unwilling to abide by its own standards of civility.

Taking the guns off the streets is a fantasy or perhaps just a fool’s errand. Only when we fully commit to a holistic approach that requires defending the weak and addressing the issues underlying the reasons people turn to guns, including mental health, lax enforcement of the law, political expediency, and twisting the Second Amendment to paralyze serious conversations, might we as a society begin the process of confronting and vanquishing this scourge.

As the co-chair of the Domestic Affairs Committee of the JCRC of Greater Philadelphia, we are committing ourselves to the issue of Gun Responsibility within the greater context of a Safe Cities Initiative. Our safe city approach is complex and challenging and without a quick fix. But the longer-term payoffs are significant. So I hope we can galvanize our community to engage in this hard work on behalf of all of us.