Some “Thoughts and Prayers” and Questions Following the Las Vegas Mass Shooting

By Bert Montgomery 

Why do we protect, support, enable, and serve the powerful gun lobbyists and manufacturers, yet we can only muster “thoughts and prayers” for the suffering, mourning, bleeding, dying population?

What if we chose to protect, support, serve, and enable the public to live in safety and without fear of being shot, and sent our “thoughts and prayers” to the lobbyists and manufacturers whenever they asked for government handouts and whined about their troubles?

What if we charged the NRA and gun manufacturers for each funeral expense, each hospital bill, each medical expense for every victim and each immediate family member of each single shooting and each mass shooting for as long as any survivor and victim’s families live and need help?

What if we did that until the manufacturers and their lobbyists decide it is no longer profitable to manufacture death, and until there are no more mass shootings, and until they turn all their weapons into plowshares and shovels and rakes and implements of production? (Check out the ministry of Shane Claiborne as an example of putting Scripture into action).

We are the only “civilized,” “democratic,” “free and wealthy” country on earth where this happens.

The greatest threats to America are not Muslims, North Korea, or black men respectfully kneeling. The greatest threat to the United States is us.

Imagine a nation where everyone who ever made a public statement boasting about their faith chose to go from letting bullets roll down like waters and military assault weapons like an ever-flowing stream, to one where we actually chose to do justice, love mercy, and walk humbly with God.

May God forgive us, for we know exactly what we do.

We are reaping exactly what we have sown.

It is time we sow safety, hope, community, and people.

It is time we sow compassion, empathy, mercy, grace, and love.

It is time we sow life.

Rev. Bert Montgomery pastors University Baptist Church in Starkville, teaches sociology and religion courses at Mississippi State University. Contact him at [email protected]. 

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