27 August—The few drivers who haven’t been illegally speeding up or down Litchfield’s iconic South Street recently may have noticed on the front lawn of St. Michael’s Episcopal Church a field of T-shirts hanging from tau crosses. What, you may ask, is a tau cross? Then, you may ask, why are the T-shirts hanging from them?

The tau cross, also known as the crux commissa and Saint Anthony’s Cross—as opposed to the better known crux immissa or Latin cross (or dagger cross, if you prefer)—is shaped like the Greek letter tau (or the Latin letter T), with the horizontal patibulum resting on top of the vertical stipes. Stipes is pronounced sty-peas in English, by the way. So the patibulum is the crosspiece or rail and the stipes is the post.

The words are derived from the Latin—what else?—patibulum meaning gallows and stipes meaning log. Many historians believe that Christ was crucified on a tau cross and it’s been adopted as the symbol of some sects and orders. And, totally irrelevant, Jehovah’s Witnesses believe that Christ wasn’t crucified at all, but rather executed on a stake—or, dare I say, a stipes sine patibulum. Peccavi.

So what are the T-shirts doing out on the Episcopal underwear Golgotha when they could be helping to keep 58 needy people warm or do other useful things? Well, as the Golgotha lawn sign explains, “Camp Washington’s Memorial to the Lost is a mobile memorial to honor and remember those who lost their lives to gun violence in Connecticut this year.”

The 58 T-shirts have names and dates written on them. Camp Washington is an “Episcopal Camp & Retreat Center/A place of acceptance, joy, and renewal for all God’s people,” according to its website. Camp Washington is in Morris, just down the road, rather than in Washington, just down the road.

It’s certainly very Christian of the local branch of the Anglican Communion to memorialize 58 of the 219 people who have allegedly died from broadly and conveniently defined gun violence in Connecticut so far this year. One wonders why those unlucky 58, rather than the other unlucky 161 (so far), were chosen to be memorialized by the lucky T-shirts. One also wonders what legitimate, useful purpose is being served by the display of T-shirts on a church lawn.

As for the 2022 breakdown of deaths by firearms, the go-to anti-gun (violence) websites are heavy on alarmist rhetoric but light on current statistics. But of the 191 Connecticut deaths attributed to gun violence in 2020, the most recent statistics I could find, 115 were suicides, 70 were homicides, fewer than 10 were thought to be “unintentional” (accidental?), 2 were “undetermined,” and 4 were by police, presumably intentional, justified, and necessary. I suspect that quite a few of the non-police homicides also were justifiable, necessary, and not criminal.

Consider, also, the 294 people who have perished so far this year in motor vehicle accidents in Connecticut and the 519 victims of drug overdoses. Motor vehicles only do what the drivers tell them to do. Guns only do what the handlers tell them to do. Guns are no more violent than motor vehicles. Guns, however, are invariably singled out as causes of violence and death. It’s obviously more convenient, fashionable, and politically correct to put the blame squarely on firearms . . .