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Sobreviviente de disparos comparte por qué los cristianos necesitan ofrecer más que pensamientos y oraciones

Por Emily Miller
shooting survivor thoughts
Diego Esquivel, left, and Linda Klaasson comfort each other May 25, 2022, as they gather to honor the victims killed in Tuesday's shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas. (AP Photo/Jae C. Hong)

When she heard about the shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas, it all came back to Taylor Schumann.

How she hid in a closet as a gunman walked into the satellite campus of New River Community College in Christiansburg, Virginia, where she was working at the front desk, just inside the entrance.

How the gunman, a student she didn’t know, fired through the door of the closet where she hid, ripping apart her left hand. Shrapnel lodged in her eye and chest.

How she couldn’t reach out to her family to let them know she’d survived and how helpless that made her feel — how helpless the students and teachers at Robb Elementary also must have felt as a gunman opened fire in their school, too.

Schumann felt the pain and the fear and the helplessness all over again when she heard about the 19 children and two adults shot to death Tuesday in Uvalde, just as she relived that trauma when she heard about any one of the mass shootings across the United States that have grabbed headlines since she was shot in 2013.

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“Experiencing a shooting, in whatever way someone might, never leaves you,” she said.

“Whenever I hear about a shooting, especially one that takes place at a school, I’m immediately brought back to the room where I was hiding. I recall the pain I felt, the fear that took hold of me, and I can’t help but feel it all over again for the people experiencing this recent shooting. It’s a visceral response.”

After several surgeries and a year of occupational therapy, Schumann now has partial use of her hand.

shooting survivor Taylor Schumann thoughts
Taylor Schumann. (Photo by Billie Jo and Jeremy Photography)

She worries about how to explain her scars to her son, now nearly old enough to go to school — or how to tell him that school shootings are no less likely now than they were nine years ago when she was injured.

Schumann’s book, “When Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough: A Shooting Survivor’s Journey Into the Realities of Gun Violence,” published last year by InterVarsity Press, describes her experience and how it impacted both her Christian faith and her views on gun reform.

“God has been good to bring me healing and restoration in the years since I was shot, but it will never leave me,” she said. “And as hard as that is, I am thankful that the pain still feels that real. As long as this keeps happening in America, I hope to never become numb to it.” 

In an email exchange, the author shared why it’s so difficult to talk about gun reform — and so important, especially for her fellow Christians.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

How did the shooting impact your faith?

My relationship with God changed a lot after the shooting, but not in the ways some people assume. I never stopped believing, and I never stopped praying, begging him for healing, asking him why. But until that point my life had been relatively quiet and easy. I had experienced hurt and hardship like anyone else, but the God I knew was still the God of mostly good times. I never had to become so intimately close to the God who bottles my tears and binds my wounds. After the shooting, I had to confront God with a lot of questions and doubts and fears.

And he met me in every single one. I learned that God is still God when the healing doesn’t come, when the nightmares don’t go away and the prayers are answered in ways you didn’t ask for.

What can be done to make sure something like this never happens again? 

When we look at research about school shootings, we find that in most cases the shooter gets the gun from their own home or the home of someone they know. In about half these cases the gun wasn’t stored safely. Yet most states have no laws requiring safe storage. Every step you put between a gun and someone else reduces the risk of harm and death. This tells us that simple safe storage laws could mean a shooting never happens.

We also know that in a lot of cases the shooter shows warning signs. This is why we need red flag laws, or extreme risk protection orders, in every single state. We tell people to say something if they see something. Offering a way for people to contact law enforcement when they notice something can make a huge difference. Other measures, like closing loopholes and enacting waiting periods, could also reduce shootings. 

Your book’s title says thoughts and prayers aren’t enough. What role do they play?

shooting survivor book thoughts
“When Thoughts and Prayers Aren’t Enough: A Shooting Survivor’s Journey Into the Realities of Gun Violence” by Taylor Schumann. (Courtesy image)

I believe in the power of prayer deeply, and that’s why it offends me so much when it’s used as simply a soundbite. I think when we pray about gun violence, we are not always open to hearing what God has to say. Are we really willing to be used to reduce gun violence? If God’s answer to our prayers requires personal sacrifice, are we willing to hear that? I’m not so sure we are.

Prayer should be where we start, not where we finish. If we were praying genuine prayers about gun violence we would see a lot more genuine action.

You wrote, “Most painful of all was the realization that those who turned away, who remained silent, were the ones I most expected to see on the front lines.” Why did you expect your fellow Christians to rally around this issue? 

We are called as Christians to care for the oppressed and the hurting and to seek justice in ways that are true to the Word of God, even when it comes at personal sacrifice. For years I had watched, and been part of, the pro-life movement, and saw people call for laws to protect life. To me, gun violence should be no different.

Gun violence is taking so many lives every single year, with 40,000 deaths on average — 40,000 image bearers of Christ taken from this earth in acts of violence. It was and is hard for me to understand why this issue hasn’t been taken up as a banner pro-life issue for Christians.

I think the political fault lines stop many people from truly getting involved, and we need to deal with that. We need to recognize other ways to care for victims and their families: community care support, financial giving, violence prevention. There are a lot of ways to care about gun violence beyond politics — though politics has not held Christians back from getting involved in other issues, so that says a lot about what we are willing to stand up for and what we aren’t.

Why is this so hard to talk about? What are we talking about when we talk about gun reform?  

Talking about gun reform is like talking about religion or abortion. You’re rarely just talking about the issue on the surface. You’re most likely talking to someone who has long-held opinions about guns that make up a portion of who they are. Likely those beliefs go back generations and are deeply ingrained in family traditions, and we’re asking them to reconsider or reevaluate part of who they are. That’s not easy.

It wasn’t easy for me either. When we are asked to reconsider something we have believed for a long time, it feels like we’re peeling up part of our own skin to look underneath. It can feel like if we do that, the whole thread of who we are might unravel. When we engage in these conversations without considering someone’s background, culture, traditions, we’re not engaging in good faith, because whether we like it or not, that stuff does matter.

So when we talk about gun reform, we need to talk about it in a way that invites all of us in, to bring with us our histories and our knowledge, and not discount someone else’s experience. 

What would you say to Christians who have different views on gun reform?

I like to remind people that gun violence is too important an issue to cling to beliefs simply because we always have. It is scary to interrogate our beliefs and wonder if we might be wrong, if we might need to change our minds. It is never my intention to shame anyone into changing their minds, but instead to offer an alternative way to think about gun reform.

Americans see the right to bear weapons as an ultimate freedom. In reality, true freedom might just be a result of laying down our personal desires and “rights” for the good of our neighbors. If you take the time to listen to the research about guns and listen to stories from survivors and don’t change your mind, I have a lot of respect for you. If you’re unwilling to do that, I would ask why you’re so resistant.

What would you share with survivors of these most recent shootings? 

For the survivors living in the aftermath of these recent shootings, I want you to know you’re not alone, and your suffering and experience will never be forgotten. There are thousands of us who have been through what you’re going through and hold you in our hearts every day. So in the dark of night, when you feel alone and forgotten, please remember that we will never forget.

Emily McFarland MillerEmily McFarlan Miller es reportera nacional de Religion News Service. 

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27 Respuestas

  1. I would ask what specific research about guns would be most helpful. There’s a lot of information out there! I definitely want to learn more, especially coming from a family that is very strong on gun rights. Thank you!!

  2. I think the “prayers”, that you don’t truly appreciate, were meant for those that grieve, asking our Lord to give them strength to endure the heart ache, to cleave to the Father, etc. i don’t believe the majority of prayers are for ending gun violence. Praying is the way we can love our neighbors that are hundreds of miles away.

  3. The Bible seems to imply that prayer is the most powerful thing we could possibly offer. Not sure why the Roy’s would support a book downplaying the power of prayer. God isn’t powerful enough to answer our prayers and do things better than we could?

    Neither should we be “laying down our rights” to gun ownership during a time of rising tyranny.

    1. Therein lies the problem…the inability to see that guns are a problem in our society and “”rights” over God’s precious created beings. When did we ever see Jesus take up the sword or insist HIS rights or fight the tyranny? And prayers are utmost important. The author is not saying that they aren’t but BACK YOUR PRAYERS WITH MORE THAN BLESS JOHNNY’S FAMILY WHILE THEY SUFFER THIS LOSS. It’s not enough to say “sending prayers” or lift up a “have your way Lord”.. We have to make changes and accessibility to guns by people who shouldn’t have guns needs to stop.

    2. Maybe we should pray that God begins to soften the hearts of the Christians who are too beholding to the gun lobby. Why should an unstable 18 year old be able to purchase a military style rifle that out powered the 20 cops who were on the scene but afraid to approach because they were out gunned?

      I doubt Jesus and his disciples would be spending $5000 each on assault rifles and ammunition like the Texas shooter did.

      If we Christians were truly following Christ and his teachings, we would not be so extreme on gun rights. For many on the right, guns have almost become a fetish. Did you see how many Republican candidates celebrated the birth of Christ this past year with family pictures with everyone holding an assault rifle in front of a Christmas tree?

      And then there is this:

      Daniel Defense, which manufactured the DDM4 V7 rifle used in the mass shooting that left 19 children and two adults dead in Uvalde, tweeted a photo on May 16 of a little boy sitting on the floor holding in his hands a rifle of a similar model to that used by the Texas gunman.

      “Train up a child in the way he should go, and when he is old, he will not depart from it,” a cutline reads above the photo.

      https://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefing-room/3503505-manufacturer-of-rifle-used-by-uvalde-shooter-posted-photo-of-child-holding-gun-days-before-attack/

      1. “Why should an unstable 18 year old be able to purchase a military style rifle that out powered the 20 cops who were on the scene but afraid to approach because they were out gunned?”

        The law needs to be changed where crimes and warning behaviors committed before age of 18 are no longer sealed (or vacated) once they turn 18 and not part of the background process. If an 18 year old law abiding citizen can serve in the military, shoot and kill others, and give their lives in the name of freedom, then they have the freedom to own a gun. You might not like it, I might not like it, but you do not punish those who follow the law to stop crime.

        The police have special training to handle these situations. If 20 tax payer trained cops are afraid to stop one man with a gun, when they are standing in the hallway outside the room where children are being massacred, they are in the wrong line of work. During an active shooter situation officer safety no longer applies and the number one priority is to stop the shooter at all costs, including their lives. That is the job they signed up for.

  4. 1. Suggestion, Stop people from buying AR-15s etc. until they are 25. They are only good for shooting hogs and people. (A small portion of the population goes nuts between 17-25.)
    If you have to get someone to buy a gun for you, then someone else knows that you really want one.
    (I do not believe that self-defense for an 18-year old in a small town requires two AR-15s.)
    2. On another Christian site, I see the argument that having guns is a “God-given right”. Aside from at the end of the world, is there any support for that in Scripture? or in some preaching?
    “He who lives by the sword, shall die by the sword” is the only verse I know about it in the NT.

  5. Sara

    Since God is most powerful and is all you need – why don’t you stop buying groceries, working at a job, putting gas in your God – surely God will take care of all your needs…. right???

  6. To those thinking this article is downplaying prayer: Taylor says, prayer should be where we START. I’d like to follow that up with scripture: Faith without works is dead.
    Prayer is indeed not enough. Time to move past the feel good Christian-ese sound bites and take action.

    1. All too often, “I’ll Pray For You(TM)” is Christianese for doing nothing and feeling all Pious about it.

      As in “Be Warm and Well Fed, I’ll Pray For You(TM)” then crossing to the other side of the street.

      Also because to the Over-Spiritual, Prayer is SPIRITUAL, NOT Physical/Fleshly, and the Spiritual always outranks the Physical.

      Unfortunately for the More Spiritual Than Thou, “God Lives in The Real World”.

  7. Guns may be the proximate cause of school shootings. Guns are not the ultimate or root cause. Loss of faith in God is the ultimate cause, but next is the breakdown of the family. Christians have been divorcing for nonbiblical reasons for decades. Christians are engaging in premarital and non-marital sex. Christians are supporting same-sex pseudogamy, in which children are intentionally deprived of a mother or father. So, by word and deed, Christians are supporting the degradation of the nuclear family which leads to all sorts of anti-social, criminal behavior including murder.

  8. Let me get this straight…

    – There are 400 million guns in America
    – 18 years can own military grade weapons and armor
    – Republican candidates are campaigning on the theme of :
    .God
    .Guns
    .Trump

    Obviously I could go on and on… but talking about gun shootings is like talking about Covid-19 mandates or that the 2020 election was stolen.

    The author mentioned the following: Americans see the right to bear weapons as an ultimate freedom. In reality, true freedom might just be a result of laying down our personal desires and “rights” for the good of our neighbors.

    I agree with that sentiment, but unfortunately most of the evangelicals I know do not .. so yes it is a spiritual problem…. but with U.S. evangelicals….

    1. There’s a religious fervor to gun ownership in America. It’s hard to imagine forcing a change without a civil war erupting. I find a strange irony that gun ownership is so sacred to much of the pro-life crowd.

  9. Pray for better gun laws.
    Or at least laws that you have to be old enough to buy beer, before you can legally buy an AR-15.
    GOP Legislators will not listen to me, but they will listen to The Base (Evangelicals). Call their office after a week and threaten to primary them, if they do not show some spine. Then follow through.

    PS If an 18-year old has to get someone else to buy a gun, at least one other person (aka the “Co-conspirator”) will know about it.

  10. Change is hard because their is no good will or trust between our legislators which mirrors our culture. If you don’t act or believe a certain way, you can be canceled or lose your job or access to your bank account(see Canada).
    In the case of Uvalde, TX, the police response was negligent costing lives. The George Floyd event told us the police were racist and evil. With crime exploding, people are told to trust police for safety and give up your weapons. Huh?
    2021 had over 100,000 overdose deaths mostly from illegal fentanyl coming through our southern border. If guns are no longer legally available here, the traffickers will bring them through the southern border to sell to gangs and criminals just like they do now with other illegal contraband. That assures the criminals will have them, but not the good citizen. Reforms can be implemented but not without good faith and that doesn’t exist in our political discourse anymore. Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neil got along, but not the current actors. God has to do a work in people’s hearts. The stresses we are facing will cause many hearts to turn to God, but it is a rough ride for all of us, some more than others, but we are not to give up hope.

    1. Guns are already heavily trafficked across the southern border—from the US into Mexico:
      “About 70% of guns recovered by Mexican law enforcement officials from 2011 to 2016 were originally purchased from legal gun dealers in the United States, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.”
      -Los Angeles Times, May 24, 2018

  11. Sadly, there is a ton of propaganda in this article. “Gun control” and “gun violence” are purposeful misleading misnomers.

    https://scienceblogs.com/deltoid/2001/07/27/levittpoolsvsguns

    Pools kill up to a 100x’s more kids than do guns every year. Why isn’t there a campaign against “pool violence” (drowning is a very painful way to die). Or “spoon violence” or “spoon control” (parents letting their kids get obese and suffer the consequences), or “vehicle violence” (cars and trucks being used to mow crowds down)?

    Lots more could be said, but I’m short on time. Maybe prayers don’t come to fruition because one is praying for the wrong thing to happen.

  12. All of these monsters have left a trail of red flags stretching, in some cases, a mile long. James Holmes told his therapist exactly what he was going to do but she was bound by HIPAA (a piece of legislation that never should have existed) to keep mum. The Parkland killer told nearly everyone who he ever spoke to online what his plans were for months in advance. The Sutherland Springs church mass murderer would have been on military death row if the Air Force valued the lives of infants half as much as they do those of ants and cockroaches.

    It is a felony to make terrorist threats in all fifty states. So no, I don’t want to hear “it’s the guns” from the relativists and their fellow-travelers.

    A just God punishes the guilty and not the innocent. Anything else is the spirit of the world, and the prince who rules it for now.

    1. It IS the guns……………………………………………………………………………………………

      Chicago 2021

      797 Murders
      4300 Shootings
      1800 Carjackings

      Typical around each shooting there are dozens of shell casings found at the crime scene.

      Yea, Ted Cruz will then say everyone is mentally psychotic.

      1. In 1960 and before, kids often took their rifles to school over their handlebars, or if they were 16 kept them in plain sight in their cars/trucks, to go hunting/plinking/target practice after school. Granted, these were mostly .22s, but they were still plenty lethal (a tube-magazine .22 can have a very high capacity).

        In this era, the number of kids with regular, unfettered access to firearms with no effective supervision whatsoever had to have been hundreds of times what it is today, adjusted for the population.

        Prior to 1934, you could legally order a full-auto Tommy Gun through your Sears catalog, no background check–a REAL military assault weapon by the textbook definition.

        Was there a pandemic of school shootings in the first part of last century? Was America beset by machine gun rampages prior to the NFA of 1934 and are we much safer today than before the NFA?

        Does Arizona, possibly the most “lax” gun state in 2022, suffer a crippling plague of mayhem in the streets constantly?

        Think about those things, even if they are obviously rhetorical questions. Guns are NOT the problem.

        1. So, I’m trying to imagine the Republican response here. If people are the problem, and not guns, then we need to control the population to weed out who is a psychopath and who isn’t? We’ll need access to everybody’s inner thoughts to find that needle in a haystack ready to explode. Or we do nothing.

          The purpose of an assault rifle is to kill people. In my opinion, the manufacturer should bear unlimited liability when their profits come at the expense of innocent victims.

        2. I was watching an old version of Hawaii Five 0 from the late seventies. McGarett, Dano and the whole team were tracking down an illegal hand-gun. When I saw it I laughed out loud, it was some little handgun or a Saturday night special.

          Back to reality where in 2022, some guy drives up and just sprays the city corner in seconds leaving people dead and wounded, with dozens of shell casings everywhere.

      2. G J,

        Do we blame the knife, hammer, rock, car/truck, fists, shovel, baseball bat, bow, or any other object when used to kill someone? How about the alcohol when someone drives impaired and kills/maims? Or the car they were driving? How about surgery instruments/medicines when a Dr. kills through malpractice?

        We used to talk about/practice our personnel responsibility framed in the 10 commandments, but churches no longer hold this standard.

        797 Murders 6 “You shall not murder.
        4300 Shootings 6 “You shall not murder.
        1800 Carjackings 10 “You shall not covet your neighbor’s house; you shall not covet your neighbor’s wife, nor his male servant, nor his female servant, nor his ox, nor his donkey, nor anything that is your neighbor’s.”

        Or as Jesus said about the 2 greatest commandments “And the second is like, namely this, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself. There is none other commandment greater than these.”

  13. “The recent mass shooter in Buffalo, NY had reportedly been coached by a former FBI agent before committing his heinous actions.

    Law enforcement sources have informed The Buffalo News that a supposedly retired federal agent was in a chat room with the killer and was given advance notice of what he was planning to do at least 30 minutes beforehand. The former agent never informed authorities.”

    https://www.lewrockwell.com/2022/05/no_author/buffalo-ny-mass-shooter-had-been-coached-by-former-fbi-agent/

    Not surprising when the same entity of people concealed information about the experimental covid injection, yet told everyone it was “safe and effective”.

    https://naomiwolf.substack.com/p/dear-friends-sorry-to-announce-a?s=r

    Christ followers need to repent of idolatry…absolute trust of those in authority.

  14. In healthy professional corrective action management cultures, the differences between “direct”, “contributing”, and “root” causes are well understood. To be effective, any corrective action plan must be based on accurate causal analysis.

    It is far too common that people with the best of intentions develop and implement a corrective action plan that fails to properly consider all types of causes, and especially to focus on the “root” cause(s). Such plans are rarely effective.

    So it is with gun violence. We must collectively seek to understand the direct, contributing, and root causes if we are to develop and implement an effective path forward. More than anything else, this requires serious listening with the purpose of understanding.

  15. sorry America it’s really simple. Double barrel or single barrel shotguns. Pump with max 5 rounds. Lever action or bolt action rifles with max 5 rounds. Double or single action revolvers and if mag fed
    pistol no more than 7 rds. From 1911 thru 1985 the us miliary used a 7-rd. colt pistol. If the us military didn’t see a need for a 10 thru 30 rd. mag pistol, why do civilians. There is NO need for any type of mag fed rifle for civilians. and it has nothing to do with “my rights”. It has everything to do with profit. In 1972 I joined the marines. For 13 weeks I carried, daily an m14 or m16. Cleaned sometimes twice a day for practice. six of those 13 weeks from at combat school and rifle range. Daily learning how to fire and maintain a M14, M16, M60 machine gun, Shotgun, .45 Cal pistol. In those six weeks I fired hundreds upon hundreds of rounds. Learning how Target and not just blasting away. Spare me your “right” to own a AR15. When people buy these weapons, who trains them???? nobody. If anyone buying a AR15 or any magazine fed rifle was required to go thru a minimum of 2 weeks of military style weapons training, including the marching, after a few days most people would be begging someone to buy the weapon just so they can quit. There is only one use for a mag fed rifle and it’s not to hunt. Well actually it is used to hunt, but unfortunately HUMANS.

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