Although one certainly shares the grief and prayers with the families of the two students who were shot and killed at Annunciation Catholic Church in Minneapolis (“A Time to Cling to Jesus,” Sept. 19 issue), and although one understands the sense of helplessness and the force of prayer in the midst of the unspeakable (“Minneapolis and the Mystery of Suffering”), isn’t there something missing?

It’s the guns, children. And we are hopeless children until we realize that.

Pope Leo did. Just after the shootings, he spoke to the crowd at St. Peter’s Square and shifted to English from Italian when he decried “the countless children killed and injured worldwide, please God stop this pandemic of arms large and small.” In 1996, the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops spoke in favor of the assault weapons ban that held for 10 years and took the number of mass shootings way down. It’s part of our sickness that the ban was lifted in 2006, and the killing went back up again. 

You will never legislate anger out of human existence. Neither will you pry away mental illness. But you can legislate against the hardware of death. You pray, of course, but the Gospels tell us you must act, too. 

— Gregory Orfalea, Santa Barbara