"On my way to services for a child shot and killed in the Bronx, during a vigil for ten people shot and killed in Buffalo, a few days before a man was shot and killed on the train, news of another mass shooting breaks, along with the hearts of families in Texas and across the country.
"Fourteen children and a teacher in Texas are not coming home from school today.
"Outside a salon. In a supermarket. A subway. A school. Gun violence pervades every corner of our communities because guns are perversely fetishized and endlessly accessible in our country. There will be explanations uncovered and excuses put forward for this inexcusable violence, but all are enabled by the weapons in the hands of a shooter, and the people and systems that put them there.
"Conservative politicians will try to conceal this crisis, and the Supreme Court is poised to make it easier to carry concealed weapons of war, to further facilitate mass murder of our kids and neighbors. And we cannot allow them to deny their role in either the mass shootings that make national news or the daily reality of gun violence that makes communities ache.
"As we pray for those who have had so many years of their young lives stolen, as we comfort the families and community who survive, forever scarred, we must confront the reality that without bold actions which put the lives of victims over an ideology of violence, we will be here again and again. Shamed, shaken, but never shocked."
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