Wear Orange on June 5

I have a lot of experience with guns:

• Years ago, a man with a gun forced his way into our house and robbed us at gunpoint.
• When I lived in the West End of St. Louis, we had a pretty standard strategy when rival gangs would have a shoot-out on our street. It didn't include calling the police. They didn't like to show up until things had cooled down.
• Early in my teaching career, I assigned a paper on the topic "A day I would like to change" and a student wrote about the time he found a gun in his father's bureau and accidentally shot his brother.
• Another of my students commented that he came from New Jersey, so several of his friends had been shot to death.
• Yet another of my students had to drop out of school to take care of his family after his brother had been shot dead.
• My wife was nearly killed because the neighbors were using a field for target practice and had not mentioned it to anyone.
• One of my childhood friends tried (unsuccessfully) to shoot himself to death with a rifle.

I don't have a lot of warm, happy, fuzzy memories that are connected with guns.

Unfortunately, my experience is far too normal in the USA. Most of us can name friends or family who have been victims of gun violence, and too often it is the simple, sad story of a child who finds a gun and is playing with it when the gun goes off. (American children are nine times more likely to be victims of this sort of accident than children from anywhere else in the world.)

Because of this, I really applaud the recent Episcopal initiative Bishops United Against Gun Violence. Just wearing orange to church on June 5 will not solve anything, but it's a beginning. We begin by raising the awareness of our friends and neighbors.