'Weeping parents' and 'small caskets': Columnist condemns 'Christians' who refuse to protect kids

Monday's mass shooting at Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee was the 38th in March and the 128th so far in 2023 – an average of nearly one-point-five per day and a significant outpacing compared to a year ago. Roughly ten percent have occurred in schools.

Like clockwork, Democrats and supporters of sensible firearm restrictions demanded reforms, while Republicans and Second Amendment absolutists encouraged "prayer" while refusing to do anything to prevent the senseless killing. One right-wing lawmaker literally declared that "we're not gonna fix" gun laws to save lives.

On Tuesday, New York Times opinion contributor Esau McCaulley railed against conservative, supposedly "Christian" lawmakers who hide behind their religious faith as a means of abdicating their most sacred duty: keeping people, particularly children, safe.

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"There are many ways to judge the success or failure of a country. We can look at its economy, the strength of its military or the quality of its education. We can examine the soundness of our bridges or the smoothness of our highways. But what if we used a different standard? We should judge a nation by a simple metric: the number of weeping parents it allows, the small caskets it tolerates," Esau wrote.

"The debate around gun control is not new, of course, and each tragedy brings a fresh wave of calls for common sense gun regulation. The adversaries of reform will rebuke us for turning a tragedy, the deaths of six innocent people, into an occasion to debate politics," he noted. "We will be urged to offer prayers for the victims and their families while we await the appropriate time to discuss the more difficult issues. But too often it seems that rather than waiting for the right time, politicians are simply trying to wait out the news cycle."

Recalling his church upbringing, McCaulley conceded that "I believe in the power of prayer" before stressing that meaningful action is still required to tackle major problems.

"The disquiet around the death of the young echoes through the centuries. Years from now, when those of us alive today have gone the way of all flesh, others will wander through our graveyards. They will see the waves of tombstones commemorating children with not enough years between the first number and the last. But unlike those children in Scotland, the cause of those tragedies will not be a mystery," McCaulley concluded. "The undeniable testimony of our actions will be that our children kept dying because some of us did not love them enough."

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McCaulley's full column is available here (subscription required).