Bob Costas was right: The American gun culture is hurting us all. Just since he spoke out, we've experienced a shooting in a shopping mall in Oregon and a dreadful mass shooting of young children and their teachers in Connecticut.
We need a 12-step program for our society's gun addiction. I call on our leaders to be the first to take these steps:
1. Start by acknowledging the problem. Repudiate the "guns don't kill people" stupidity. Stop the NRA-inspired defensiveness.
2. Recognize that only a society working together can approach this problem and that doing nothing is not an option.
3. Appeal to the higher power of people in community, most of whom want the best for our children, if not for everyone. Ask for help even from those "law-abiding gun owners" who are lifted up by some as having rights that are more important than the right of small children to be safe in their kindergarten class.
4. Make a searching and fearless moral inventory of the problem of the glorification of guns in this country, including the delusional idea that "arming" more citizens would somehow make us safer, and the ease by which unstable, unsuitable people can obtain guns.
5. Admit to God, yourself and your fellow members of government that you have paid undue homage to this gun culture, especially as it is advanced by the NRA.
6. Open yourselves to working together with the American people to solve this problem.
7. Humbly ask God to help us and our puny political systems.
8. & 9. Make amends to people harmed by the gun culture, using the resources of all who have profited from it (including the makers of violent video games and politicians who have pandered to the gun lobby, as well as the lobbyists themselves.)
10. Continue to discuss the problem openly and admit when something doesn’t work and discontinue bad policy.
11. Pray that God will open our hearts to God's will for peace — in our hearts, in our families, in our neighborhoods and in our nation.
12. Having seen the light about the destructiveness of the gun culture, try to carry this message to other government leaders and to fellow citizens, and practice a renewed awareness of the need to work for the common good in all your affairs.
Virginia Gilbert • St. Louis
