Reducing Gun Violence Report Passes Overwhelmingly - "We Await Results"

By Jan Orr-Harter

With resounding support, the Report 11-06, "Gun Violence, Gospel Values," passed in the final Assembly vote by a show of hands. PPF has supported this, and through PPF National Committee member Jim Atwood, played a critical role. The General Assembly News reported that Rev. Catherine Snyder, Presbyterian Campus minister at Virginia Tech, wept openly as the committee passed the report. Snyder counseled and consoled students and families following the horrific handgun murders committed there by a disturbed student, killing 32 persons in 2007.

This action by GA has real teeth in it to help reverse the growing support for the proliferation of guns in the United States. It calls for a comprehensive program in liturgy, pastoral care, education, advocacy and direct action, including actions at gun stores identified as selling weapons frequently used in crimes. Churches are also asked to declare their properties as gun-free zones.

Advocacy aspects including requiring background checks, registration and a waiting period for all gun sales and limiting personal gun acquisition to one handgun per month and raising the age for handgun purchase to the legal drinking age (21). The action also calls for banning semi-automatic weapons, armor-piercing handgun ammunition and .50 caliber sniper rifles, as well as a group of actions to strengthen law enforcement agencies in tracking weapons used in crimes, and support for laws as described by the International Association of Police Chiefs to remove guns from situations of domestic violence, mental illness, drug use and previous criminal records that suggest a danger of violence. It also calls for increasing police training in nonviolent pro-active intervention.

Finally, it calls for Mission Responsibility Through Investment to develop corporate engagement with corporations with which the church holds stock that may comply with the values of the report and to recommend shareholder proposals and divestment actions where needed.

When the Assembly votes electronically, there is a lag moment during which the moderator says, "We await results." For years...and years... the church has passed gun-related resolutions in this direction. However, very little has occurred at the local level. What has occurred is what emergency room physicians now call an epidemic of accelerating gun violence in the United States. Will this GA action summon the church to help turn these statistics around? We await results. And, in PPF, we must summon our own capacities to help achieve those results by serving the church in this new momentum toward local and national actions to reduce gun violence. Expect the PPF National Committee to discuss this at its September annual meeting. Send suggestions now! Many thanks to Jim Atwood, Catherine Snyder and all from PPF and the church who have helped to chart this potentially historic new course. We must create results.

Also on Thursday, the GA passed non-violence-related actions such as the Charter of Compassion overture, which more or less could sum up our entire PPF platform (see http://www.charterforcompassion.org) and support for immigrants (against the AZ laws, prohibiting GA mtgs in any state that enacts such laws) and calling for a national moratorium on the death penalty. Not a bad day for nonviolence. Stay tuned.