One week ago today there was a shooting on my block, just a
few houses down from where I live. I had been home alone for a while that
Friday evening, cooking dinner, relaxing, and actually writing a blog post that
never made it to the web. I heard shouting out on the street for a while, which
isn’t uncommon. The distance to the other side of our one-way street is short,
so people often shout from porch to porch. Even the fact that they were angry
shouts wasn’t all that uncommon.
But it was disconcerting to me that the shouts persisted for
25 minutes. At one point I glanced out of the large window in our front door
just to see who it was. I didn’t recognize anyone except one of our neighbors
who was on her porch across the street from me. She has called herself the “unofficial
block captain,” so I was put at ease to see her out there, even if she was just
observing the same as me.
I went back to blogging, briefly praying for peace to reign
on my block and in Southwest Philly. Not long after, three of my teammates came
home, excited to share a funny story from their experience on the trolley ride
home. They took turns sharing parts of the story, and we were all laughing.
Then came the shots, several of them. It’s hard to know, but
between 7 and 12 shots rang out. Our first reaction was to shut off the lights
and run upstairs to the back room of house. We alerted the police and the rest
of our teammates who were potentially making their way home soon. Rattled, we
prayed together and eventually went to sleep with heavy hearts, wondering who
may have been affected by the gunfire.
The next day we saw a police car parked outside the house of
a neighbor we know well. You may remember the story from one of my newsletters
about a woman who couldn’t believe that we would host a dinner just especially
for her and her family. It was her house, where she lives with her husband, two
sons (one 22 and one in high school), 10ish-year-old daughter, and
four-year-old grandson. We were surprised, because for the most part this
family keeps to themselves. We were immediately afraid that the bullets, which
had shattered the storm door, had injured any of them, but especially one of
the young kids that we play with regularly.
We heard about what happened through the eyes of various
neighbors. One of our teenage friends told us it was an intra-gang dispute. She
knew because she was standing next to the gunman, apparently not older than 23,
who told her, “Get down,” before firing the shots. We learned from the father
of the house that it was their oldest son who had “gotten into a little
trouble,” but that everyone was okay.
The mother attended our Christmas party later that weekend
and told us that her oldest son was shot in the arm, but that he was okay. She
told us about how the police offered to take her to the hospital, following the
ambulance, but instead went to the police station to question her. After she
refused to answer any questions, they eventually took her to her son, the
gunfire victim, who was handcuffed to the hospital bed while receiving
treatment. Although we were saddened and disgusted by the story she had to
share, we were relieved to hear that the physical harm was not extreme.
Our team has spent a lot of time processing these events.
There are so many facets. What if I had called the police to break up the
dispute in the street before it got violent? What if the trolley had dropped
off my teammates a little bit later, so that they would have been walking home
when it happened? What if the bullets hit some other part of his body? What
kind of trauma would this cause our friend who witnessed it? What if the kids
had been playing in the living room? How were we to respond in love to our
neighbors’ situation?
Our conversations have not answered every question. But they
have revealed the power of guns to turn an emotional response or impulse into a
life-changing or life-ending event. From my understanding, the young man with
the gun wanted to set his friend straight. In a moment of pride, vengeance, and
anger, he pulled out a weapon. Frustrated that his point hadn’t yet been made
after 20 minutes, he resorted to use of a deadly weapon.
It’s often said that people, not guns, do the killing. As
someone who appreciates technicalities, that saying is technically true. There
many, many factors that contributed to this complicated situation, but had the
young man not been holding a gun, his fit of pride and vengeance probably would
not have ended the same way. I don’t write this to make a political statement. (Frankly, I'm annoyed that most readers can't absorb this without politics coming to mind.) I write to lament that such life-threatening power is afforded to emotion and
impulse by guns. I never want my emotions—be they anger, pride, envy, fear, or protection—to
be so powerful as to take life. I don’t trust myself—or anyone really—to
augment raw emotion with the power to kill.
It’s not worth it.
Please join me in praying for my neighbors affected by gun
violence last week and those around Philly affected by it almost daily. Pray
for the gunman on my street and all those that resort to gun violence. Pray for
a society that trusts deadly force to impulse and emotion. Pray for violence of
all kind to end.
