[Washington National Cathedral] The Very Rev. Gary Hall, Dean of Washington National Cathedral made the following statement Oct. 21:

“The news of Monday’s shooting at Sparks Middle School in Nevada came as a disturbing reminder that our nation has made little meaningful progress toward enacting widely supported, common-sense measures to prevent gun violence since the Sandy Hook shootings in Newtown, Conn., last December. Even as we grieve with and for the Sparks community and for all directly affected by the shooting, we also grieve for the 50 children and teens that die or are injured from guns every day. While their tragedies go widely unreported in the news media, we pledge ourselves to a new level of resolve to end gun violence involving children.”

Just yesterday Washington National Cathedral welcomed Children’s Defense Fund President Marian Wright Edelman and former Surgeon General David Satcher, along with two other leading physicians, for the twenty-second national observance of Children’s Sabbath. This year’s theme, “Beating Swords into Plowshares: Ending the Violence of Guns and Child Poverty,” explored some of the many interrelated factors that make gun violence such a problem in our nation and such a danger to our nation’s youth.

[More information is here.]

“We will continue to explore gun violence, its public health consequences, and the toll it takes on children in the months ahead,” said Dean Hall.  “We will continue to pray that other houses of worship across the country will join us in demanding an end to the easy availability of guns that so recklessly endangers the most vulnerable in our cities, our work, our gathering places, and—increasingly—our schools.”