Category Archives: gun safety

Prayer for an end to mass shootings

Posted on May 1, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

My God,can we not go one week,sabbath to sabbath,without a mass shooting? Will you not beatour pistols into ploughshares,our shotguns into shovels,our rifles into rakes,massage some feeling intoour hearts of stone? I sigh, open my eyes;the mirror stares back in … Continue reading →

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Are we there yet?

Posted on March 28, 2021 by Rosalind C Hughes

There is nothing in Christ’s story that would justify our sacrifice of children, women, grocery shoppers, police officers, and passers by to defend our right to reserve weapons of violence to ourselves. On the contrary, the resurrection is God’s ultimate judgement on the violence that nailed Jesus to the cross. The resurrection is God’s utter negation and reversal of all that would kill the beloved. Continue reading →

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Standing up to Stand Your Ground: an open letter

Posted on September 30, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

We are not at war with one another. We are not at war with our fellow citizens or other Ohio residents. We do not need a law that assumes an attitude of antagonism between neighbors. Continue reading →

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Who among you: an open letter about guns

Posted on July 28, 2020 by Rosalind C Hughes

An open letter to the Ohio Senate 133rd General Assembly regarding Senate Bill 137: Exempt from training if allowed to go armed in school safety zone. Continue reading →

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Race and guns: a call to the occasion “For Such a Time As This” with the Rev. Sharon Risher

Posted on November 16, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

I was honoured to offer this opening prayer and call at lunch with God Before Guns and the Rev. Sharon Risher at Forest Hill Presbyterian Church, Cleveland Heights, today. What do guns have to do with any of this? That … Continue reading →

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What are we worth?

Posted on October 6, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

No matter what we do, it is no more than Christ has ordered us to do, no more than our baptismal promises to resist evil, to strive for justice and peace among all people, to respect the life and dignity of every human being; to become slaves to the love of God and of God’s family in creation.
But, “worthless”? Continue reading →

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100 orange stoles

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

In 2016, in the run-up to the second annual National Gun Violence Awareness Day, I began making orange stoles to bring the #WearOrange movement, with its focus on life and hope, back to church. It wasn’t exactly nor entirely my … Continue reading →

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#DoSomething

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Expanding background checks makes us accountable to one another for the spread and distribution of deadly weapons. Red flag laws would be, I believe, an Act of compassion. We might even find, as we re-examine our relationship with guns, that we do not need them as much, or as many, or to hold them as close as we have thought. Continue reading →

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Everything comes with a side of guns

Posted on August 21, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

I did not have the time to wonder deeply why a construction company, expert in damp recovery and replastering, thought that an active shooter drill would be right up their alley (nor why we would call them first in the unfortunate event). I did not have the wherewithal in that Thursday moment to explain my theological aversion to drilling fear into our worship, or the stubborn resistance to the inevitably of guns everywhere that stems from the sanctuary of my foolish faith. Continue reading →

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Gilroy, guns, and White anger

Posted on August 2, 2019 by Rosalind C Hughes

Red Letter Christians published a piece I wrote reflecting on the uncivil war simmering in the soul of America, one that breaks out all too often in acts of violence like last weekend’s tragedy in Gilroy, California. Continue reading →

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