I wrote this in July of 2024 after the assassination attempt on Donald Trump. With some adjustments, it also applies in the aftermath of the death of Charlie Kirk:
Conservatives, my thoughts and prayers are with you.
I say that partly because I want you to experience firsthand how lame and empty, and above all vague, that sentiment sounds — how phony and hypocritical, especially coming from those who fiercely oppose common-sense gun regulation that would protect people like Charlie Kirk, and the rest of us, from attacks like the one that ended his young life.
Nonetheless, my thoughts and prayers — unlike the phony politicians who spout them after every mass killing — are sincere if not altogether consoling.
Here are my thoughts, which are not vague:
Now you know how it feels. Perhaps now you can begin to imagine how parents of the first-graders at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut felt in 2012 when they saw their first-graders, ripped apart (literally) on the floor of their classroom, by an assault weapon that you and every Republican member of Congress fiercely oppose doing anything to protect us from. Now at least you know what it’s like to have some crazy, hate-filled person do this to someone you loved and admired.
And now you also know what so many of your fellow countrymen go through every day, wondering if they will be the next victims of a deranged murderer. Until now, you seemed to care far more about protecting your precious “gun rights.” Maybe you’ll show more concern after this latest episode in our ongoing national agony.
Welcome to the club — those of us who are more than fed up, as our loved ones and fellow Americans get picked off by serial killers carrying high-capacity assault weapons or sniper rifles or semiautomatic weapons turned into machine guns using bump stocks. Maybe this will serve as a reminder to think more deeply about all this, and begin to support common-sense gun regulation that could prevent assassination attempts like this, no matter the target’s political affiliation — such as the two progressive Minnesota state legislators who were assassinated earlier this year. Were you even aware of them? Not many conservatives sent thoughts and prayers after those killings. Maybe Fox News didn’t bother to report it.
Gun violence, I’m sure you’ll agree, is never the answer, and political violence is abhorrent and infectious. Now that you’ve been on the receiving end of it, I hope you will stop supporting political figures like Donald Trump, who regularly employs violence in his rhetoric — inciting a murderous insurrection against our own Capitol, and regularly calling for retribution against his “enemies.”
No one deserves to be shot, no matter how hateful their rhetoric, no matter how much social media superstars contribute to the polarization that leads to such violence. But maybe this will wake all of us up to the lesson, long unlearned, that if you live by extremism and divisiveness you may also die by it.
Those are my thoughts. Here are my prayers:
I pray that instead of hardening our hearts even further, we will all overcome our fears and become wiser, more humane, less intolerant human beings.
I pray that you will examine your political ideology and turn away from the inhumane policies that you have been supporting, the ones that put all our lives in danger and that cause your fellow Americans untold suffering.
I pray that you and the party you support renounce your unreasonable, irrational positions on common-sense gun regulation, something you can actually do, instead of merely thinking and praying.
I pray that you are moved by this experience to feel more empathy for the growing number of Americans, especially the parents of the victims of so many school massacres, whose lives have been ripped apart, partly because of your opposition to measures that could have prevented such killings, both in the past as well as in the future.
I pray that conservative Christians like those who admired Charlie Kirk will stand up to the gun lobby that prevents real progress on this issue and actually vote against candidates who serve that lobby.
I pray that this experience helps you understand the anxiety that so many Americans have been living with for far too long.
And I pray that you undergo a personal conversion and transformation that leads you to support policies that could have prevented such a painful loss.
Don’t just think … do.
Don’t just pray … do your own research.
Think for yourself. Google “national movement against gun violence” and see what comes up. Make a sign and show up at protest rallies. Organize a group at your church that focuses on ways to reduce gun violence. Lobby those you voted for who are making the situation worse, not better.
Don’t just think and pray.
Don’t just hate and blame.
Join the growing national groundswell against gun violence.