What is the difference between “martyrs”–those who were murdered when they would not recant their own faith or beliefs–and those who have been murdered when they showed up at school?

The saints celebrated today in Christian history are Faustinus and Jovita, two brothers from a town in what is now northern Italy, who were beheaded by executive order (by the emperor) around the year 121. On February 14, 2018, at least 17 persons were executed at a school in Parkland, Florida, by an expelled student wielding a “.223 caliber AR-15 style firearm.” While these students were not killed by executive order, the ability of this murderer to have access to such a weapon has been by a combination of legislative and executive and judicial action and inaction.

When people are executed with the active permission or tacit inactivity of those in power, where should the focus go? What is the conversation we must have? The victims and their families? The doctrinal beliefs espoused by the victims? The age and location of the victims? The “innocence” of the victims? This keeps the discussion discrete to each person (or group) killed in each event.

Or perhaps we should focus on the actual executioners? The names of the emperor-directed executioners, just as the names of those who carry out state-ordered executions at our jails go unreported, but the focus on public assassinations inevitably goes to Who was the shooter (or assassin who used some other means)? How did the shooter get the weapons? Why did the shooter do it? What events led up to the shooter’s decision to pull the trigger? This keeps the discussion discrete to each shooter involved in each event.

Or should we focus on the question of how governments actively condone or passively look away from these murders? Why don’t elected representatives enact sensible gun control? How is it that lobbyist money can pervert the clear wishes of the majority of Americans? Taking this route, however, projects the discussion outward such that it victims and perpetrators become “issues,” and this, in turn, attracts entrenched politicos to hurl their well-rehearsed viewpoints at each other…while the NRA simultaneously gets vilified and grows its coffers.

Or perhaps the discussion can begin with us. What world are we willing to live in? What will we do to live that way? What values can we build on? Specifically, I have to hope that there is a critical mass of people who never want to see school-age children murdered, whatever their political affiliations. What if we just sit together with this collective desire? What if we gather, sit for however long it takes without speaking so that we can all feel this prayer, this desire, this wish of “never again”?

And, when at last we open our mouths, let us voice our shared feelings. And then ask ourselves, “Where next do we go from here?”