HANOVER — Pastor Kyle Seibert listened to the news on Saturday and early Sunday and wound up revising that weekend’s sermon to the congregation of Our Savior Lutheran Church.
And after the Sunday service, Seibert and church members decided they wanted to reach outside the church to mourn the people who died in the latest mass shootings — more than 20 at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, and nine in Dayton, Ohio.
So through emails, social media and Listservs, they spread the word that on Friday night at 7, the church will host what it’s calling a “Community Vigil for Victims of Gun Violence (And the Rest of Us).”
“I’ve been receiving responses at all hours of the day since it went out on Tuesday afternoon,” Seibert said Thursday. “They’re coming both from clergy and from lay leaders within their congregations, as well as from leaders of other non-profit groups.”
Seibert said that aside from welcoming visitors and ringing the church bell for each of the people who have died in mass shootings in the United States in 2019 — “which as of (Wednesday) was at 276” — Our Savior is leaving the agenda open for both secular and religious readings, playing and singing music, and spontaneous calls and responses.
If any such gatherings generate more and louder voices for stricter gun laws, the proponents shouldn’t expect a change of heart from organizations such as the New Hampshire Firearms Coalition.
“We should be careful not to start punishing lawful owners of firearms for the few who commit gun tragedies,” coalition secretary JR Hoell, a former state representative from Dunbarton, N.H., said Thursday. “We don’t punish all drivers for the actions of a few drunk drivers. We have to look at society as a whole.”
Mental-health professionals and advocates said they worry that society is looking too reflexively at people who are struggling for sanity.
“We’re the easy thing for the political powers to point to,” West Central Behavioral Health President and CEO Suellen Griffin said Thursday. “This does not help. It feeds into people’s fear. People with mental illness are not violent as a general rule, If anything, they’re more often victims of violence. It’s a cop-out for the president and the nation not to address gun ownership.”
While the nation grasps for a long-term solution, Our Savior is training its leaders and members to react active shooters, especially since the murders of nine people at a synagogue in Pittsburgh on Oct. 27, and of 51 at a mosque in New Zealand on March 15.
“We’d been talking about it for a while: ‘Oh, yeah: This is something we should do,’ but it never quite made it to the top of the agenda,” Seibert said. “Now, every time we gather to worship, it is something I always think about.”