Bishop Brennan Condemns Colorado Springs Shooting, Calls for Gun Law Changes
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WHEELING – The Most Rev. Mark Brennan, bishop of the Wheeling-Charleston Diocese, condemned this past weekend's mass shooting in Colorado once again calling for legislators to change gun laws to keep these incidents from happening.
Five people were killed and 19 others injured after a lone shooter opened fire at Club Q, an LGBTQ-friendly club in Colorado Springs. Patrons subdued the shooter, who faces five counts of first-degree murder and five counts of a bias-motivated crime causing bodily injury in connection with the shooting.
"Our faith teaches us to do good to our neighbor, not harm, and explicitly forbids us to kill our neighbor," Brennan said in a statement released Tuesday. "We do not have to agree with the lifestyle, political views, religious beliefs, or immigration status of our neighbor, but we must respect his or her bodily integrity and take measures to ensure that others respect it as well."
Brennan said that, while the victims in Colorado Springs were members of the LGBTQ community, members of the Jewish, Christian, Muslim, African American and Latino communities also have been targeted in recent "hate-filled murders." The solution, he said, comes with the admission that gun proliferation is a major problem in the United States that must be fixed.
"We have put our heads in the sand so that we don't have to face the truth: the proliferation of guns is a strong contributing factor to the surge of violence in our communities," he said. "We can speak all day about the right to own a gun, but rights must be balanced with responsibilities. We have a duty not only to defend individual rights but also to promote the common good. The pendulum has swung too far to the side of individual rights. It is time to take effective steps to curb the plague of gun violence."
Brennan in his statement called for stronger criminal and mental health background checks and assault weapon bans. He also said that those who hunt should agree "out of a sense of responsibility to the wider community" to store their guns at a local center where they would pick them up when they went out to hunt and return them when they finished.
"Pious words lamenting mass shootings have lost all credibility," he said. "Action is needed. Will West Virginians rise to the challenge? At the Last Judgement, we will not face the NRA or a politician as our judge but the Lord Jesus, who died a violent death for our sake. He will ask us: did you love your neighbor as yourself? Did you do to others what you would have them do to you? Did you care more for the safety and welfare of your brothers and sisters than for an individual right enshrined in a political constitution? What answer will we give to him?"