When babies die at a church school, it is time for us to move beyond our thoughts and prayers, according to the chaplain who leads prayers in the US Senate. Barry C Black was talking about the shooting at the Covenant School in Nashville, Tennessee on Monday, in which three nine-year-olds and three adults were killed. The shooter was killed by police.
Since the shooting, Democrats from Joe Biden have urged gun control reform, including an assault weapons ban.
Many Republicans opposed to gun regulation have offered thoughts and prayers instead.
The House majority leader, Steve Scalise, who survived a shooting at congressional baseball practice in 2017 was among those to offer prayers.
He said that I get angry when people try to politicize it for their own agenda, especially when we don't know the facts.
It seems like on the other side, all Democrats want to take guns away from law-abiding citizens before they know the facts and that is not the answer, by the way. Other Republicans, including Missouri Senator Josh Hawley, have called for a hate crimes investigation, given that the target of the shooting was a Christian school.
The motive is not yet known, according to authorities, from the chief of Nashville police to the US attorney general, Merrick Garland.
In the Senate, Black said: Remind our lawmakers of the words of British statesman Edmund Burke: All that is necessary for evil is for good people to do nothing. Lord, deliver our senators from the analysis that waits for the miraculous. Use them to battle the demon forces that try to engulf us. We pray, in your powerful name, amen. Since becoming Senate chaplain in 2003, the retired rear admiral has not shied away from controversy.
In 2012 he participated in a Hoodies on the Hill rally in protest of the killing of Trayvon Martin, a Black teenager who was shot dead in Florida.
In 2013 during a government shutdown caused by the Texas Republican Ted Cruz, Black used a prayer to refer to madness and the hypocrisy of attempting to sound reasonable while being unreasonable In 2020, Black told the Washington Post: "I am a human being who is reacting to the horrific events in Nashville that most Americans are seeing." This has been a priority of mine that we do better at trying to solve this problem.
I am calling for problem solving that is what is accurate to say. Let s get it done, because that is done.