Elise Harris – Fonte: © Crux
7 aug 2019
ROME – Global Catholic leaders have raised their voices over the deaths of more than 30 people in mass shootings over the weekend in the United States, with several in both Mexico and Italy condemning racism and calling for stricter gun policies…
…In addition to Gnavi, several Vatican publications also weighed in on the shootings, including Vatican newspaper L’Osservatore Romano, the “Vatican News” website, and Avvenire, the official newspaper for the Italian bishops’ conference. Notably, they each referred to statements made by the U.S. bishops, rather than issuing their own.
In an interview with Vatican News on the topic of gun control, Giorgio Beretta, a gun control advocate who works at the Permanent Observatory on Small Arms, Security and Defense Policies of Brescia, said the debate over gun control could flare up after a recent study released by Eures, which reports that firearms are the most used weapons in family homicides.
“Today it could be a big problem in Italy too,” Beretta said, noting that gun control laws are more restrictive at the level of the European Union.
Widening access to guns “poses a problem of mentality in Italy,” he said, adding that in light of Italy’s new law, gun control is “a big problem that we must ask ourselves very soon, because already today family homicides are carried out above all with firearms.”
In his comments to Crux, Gnavi said that if weapons are in the house, “sooner or later someone will use it, some blood will be spilled.”
“Who is (responsible for) declaring what is the line I cross to defend myself?” he said, adding, “Sometimes we are not so clear in our hearts and minds…the mental shape of self-defense can go far beyond self-defense; it might be the beginning of a local war.”…Read the whole article
Credit: AP Photo/Eric Gay, File. In this Nov. 12, 2017, file photo, a rose rests on a chair during a memorial for the victims of the shooting at Sutherland Springs First Baptist Church at the church in Sutherland Springs, Texas.