Gun safety advocates pray for NRA members holding annual meeting in Louisville

As tens of thousands of National Rifle Association members continued their annual meeting in Louisville this weekend , a group of gun control advocates gathered at a local university to pray for them, asking God to “open their minds and their hearts”.

“We gather this morning, your children, to pray for peace, to pray for an end to gun violence that takes away too many lives,” the Rev Dr Peggy Cecil-Hinds told a group of more than 150 in a quiet auditorium filled with folding chairs.

“Lord, we pray this morning for our brothers and sisters that are at the NRA convention, for they too are children of God,” she said. “We pray that you will speak to them this day … and that you will open their minds and their hearts to see the good in all people, to value the lives of every man, woman and child.

“Not all the people who are part of the NRA are people who want violence, and many, many of them agree with us that commonsense gun laws are important and necessary.”

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At the screening of Under the Gun on Saturday, quilts commemorating victims of gun violence were displayed on the walls. A small packet of tissues rested on the chair at the end of each row.

Activists recited the number of Americans killed with guns each year, focusing on suicide, children killed by guns, domestic violence and the deaths of young African American men and women.

Cecil-Hinds, interim executive director of the Kentucky Council of Churches, said many NRA members “are Christian people who believe that what they are doing is right”.

“If we speak out against them without praying for them, then we do an injustice to God’s work in the world,” she said. “God calls us to be one body and love one another. Jesus said, ‘Love your enemies and pray for those who persecute you.’ That’s why I do it.”

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Pastor Sharon Kutz-Mellem, another local organizer, said she prayed for victims of gun violence with her congregations each week, and that she was motivated to take more action to address gun violence by the mass shooting at a historic black church in Charleston last June.

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A group of people carrying guns had showed up at a recent meeting of Kentucky gun control advocates, spokeswoman Taylor Maxell said, adding that if that happened again, it could be a traumatic experience for some gun violence survivors.

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http://www.rawstory.com/2016/05/gun-safety-advocates-pray-for-nra-members-holding-annual-meeting-in-louisville/

"We are militant. You have to be militant to stand on a picket line with a gun pointed at your head. You have to be militant to keep pressure on growers all the time, pushing them back from barrier to the next...We have found prayer important in nonviolent work, but it's most effective when accompanied by lots of hard picketing"



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