When Antoinette Tuff saw a gunman as a human being

As I read the headline yesterday, my heart began to pound and my throat closed up: “School Clerk In Georgia Persuaded Gunman To Lay Down Weapons.” This was a good story—ultimately a hopeful one—but all I could see was “school” and “gunman."

In the eight months since the mass shooting in Newtown, Connecticut, I have preached a number of times about violence in this country. I did this after Newtown, after Hadiya Pendleton, after the assault weapons ban failed to pass, after the Supreme Court struck down parts of the Voting Rights Act (which sought to remediate violence historically done to would-be voters), after the George Zimmerman verdict. I feel like a broken record. I am exhausted by a year of lament.

I live in as safe a town as any, not in Egypt, Syria or Afghanistan. But one need not reside in a war-torn nation to feel the effects of violence. Study after study reveals how the brains and biochemistry of people, especially children, are affected by the associated stresses of violence, even by the noise of repeated gunfire.