Loading...
Loading...
Click here if you don’t see subscription options
JesuiticalMay 27, 2022
Vincent Salazar, right, father of Layla Salazar, weeps while kneeling in front of a cross with his daughter's name at a memorial site for the victims killed in this week's elementary school shooting in Uvalde, Texas, Friday, May 27, 2022. (AP Photo/Dario Lopez-Mills)

This week, an 18-year-old in Uvalde, Tex., killed 19 children and two teachers at Robb Elementary School. The massacre came less than two weeks after a white supremacist killed 10 people at a supermarket in a majority-Black neighborhood of Buffalo, N.Y.

We’ve been here before. This happens all the time in America. And it feels like we have the same reactions, the same conversations, read the same tweets.

Which is why instead of a normal show this week, we’re revisiting a conversation from 2018 about gun control. In the aftermath of a shooting that killed 17 people at Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School in Parkland, Fla., we brought on Patrick Blanchfield, who writes about gun violence in the United States. We discussed what gets missed in our gun control conversations, the familiar debate over “thoughts and prayers” and how violence in American schools and on our streets is connected to American violence abroad.

Links from the show:

Catholic leaders react to Texas school massacre: ‘Don’t tell me that guns aren’t the problem.’
Cardinal Cupich: The Second Amendment did not come down from Sinai
How the Catholic Church in Uvalde is helping a devastated community grieve and heal
Sad, tired and angry: A prayer in the face of gun violence

More: Guns

We don’t have comments turned on everywhere anymore. We have recently relaunched the commenting experience at America and are aiming for a more focused commenting experience with better moderation by opening comments on a select number of articles each day.

But we still want your feedback. You can join the conversation about this article with us in social media on Twitter or Facebook, or in one of our Facebook discussion groups for various topics.

Or send us feedback on this article with one of the options below:

We welcome and read all letters to the editor but, due to the volume received, cannot guarantee a response.

In order to be considered for publication, letters should be brief (around 200 words or less) and include the author’s name and geographic location. Letters may be edited for length and clarity.

We open comments only on select articles so that we can provide a focused and well-moderated discussion on interesting topics. If you think this article provides the opportunity for such a discussion, please let us know what you'd like to talk about, or what interesting question you think readers might want to respond to.

If we decide to open comments on this article, we will email you to let you know.

If you have a message for the author, we will do our best to pass it along. Note that if the article is from a wire service such as Catholic News Service, Religion News Service, or the Associated Press, we will not have direct contact information for the author. We cannot guarantee a response from any author.

We welcome any information that will help us improve the factual accuracy of this piece. Thank you.

Please consult our Contact Us page for other options to reach us.

City and state/province, or if outside Canada or the U.S., city and country. 
When you click submit, this article page will reload. You should see a message at the top of the reloaded page confirming that your feedback has been received.

The latest from america

In this episode of Inside the Vatican, Colleen Dulle and Gerard O’Connell discuss the 2025 Jubilee Year, beginning on Christmas Eve 2024 and ending in January 2026.
Inside the VaticanDecember 26, 2024
Pope Francis gives his Christmas blessing "urbi et orbi" (to the city and the world) from the central balcony of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican Dec. 25, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
Pope Francis prayed that the Jubilee Year may become “a season of hope” and reconciliation in a world at war and suffering humanitarian crises as he opened the Holy Door in St. Peter’s Basilica on Christmas Eve.
Gerard O’ConnellDecember 25, 2024
Pope Francis, after opening the Holy Door of St. Peter's Basilica at the Vatican, gives his homily during the Christmas Mass at Night Dec. 24, 2024. (CNS photo/Lola Gomez)
‘If God can visit us, even when our hearts seem like a lowly manger, we can truly say: Hope is not dead; hope is alive and it embraces our lives forever!’
Pope FrancisDecember 24, 2024
Inspired by his friend and mentor Henri Nouwen, Metropolitan Borys Gudziak, leader of Ukrainian Catholics in the U.S., invites listeners in his Christmas Eve homily to approach the manger with renewed awe and openness.
PreachDecember 23, 2024