Gun Violence

One year after the Uvalde mass school shooting, which left 19 students and two teachers dead, officials with Chicago-based Catholic Extension visited the Texas city to renew the organization’s solidarity with a community still in the process of healing and announce its financial and tangible support will continue.

Community members gathered in Uvalde, Texas, to pray and honor the 21 lives taken last year in a mass shooting at Robb Elementary School.

Dallas Bishop Edward J. Burns addressed the faithful of the diocese “with a heavy heart” late May 6 after at least eight people, including a child, were killed during a mass shooting that afternoon at an outlet mall in Allen, Texas.

“Prayer that leads to action” is needed to counter a bewildering rise in mass shootings and gun violence, said Atlanta Archbishop Gregory J. Hartmayer.

Five women were shot, one fatally, in the waiting room of a medical office in Atlanta May 3, sparking area lockdowns and a manhunt that lasted into the late evening.

Washington state enacted a new law April 25 banning the sale, manufacture and import of assault weapons, or military-style semi-automatic firearms such as the AR-15, a weapon that has been used in some of the recent mass shootings in the United States.