Heart and Soul: Guns, grief and god

The Documentary Podcast

BBC

Society & Culture, Documentary, Personal Journals

4.3 • 2.6K Ratings

🗓️ 11 April 2025

⏱️ 26 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

On 4 September 2024, the town of Winder in the US state of Georgia became the latest scene of a school mass shooting. Two students and two teachers were killed. The suspect was 14 years old. The deadly attack at Apalachee High School left a community torn apart by guns and brought together in grief. In each of the previous four years there have been more than 600 mass shootings in the United States - almost two a day on average. Edward Stourton has been to Georgia to visit the church community attached to the high school, as they try to make sense of the violence in their hometown. He meets Pastor Frank Burnat and his pastoral team, who are ministering to a community in which both God and guns are a part of everyday life.

Transcript

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0:00.0	I told my mom I love her and that there was someone with a gun.
0:07.0	I think he wanted to come to us first.
0:11.0	Come to you first to shoot?
0:14.0	Yes.
0:15.0	And then I told my sisters, I love y'all so much.
0:18.0	There's someone here with a gun.
0:20.0	I just want to tell you I love you'all so much. There's someone here with a gun, and I just want to tell you, I love you.
0:24.0	They almost let him in until they backed up, and then he turned away, and that's when you hear
0:31.3	like the first rounds of fire. The 4th of September, 24, a school day which began like any other, ends in tragedy.
0:41.1	And one of my teachers went, like, out to go see what it was.
0:45.6	And, like, he peeked his head out, and then as he was shutting the door, he got shot.
0:50.4	People just dropped to the floor and, like, kind of crawled.
0:53.4	The teacher turned off the lights, but we all just kind of piled together.
0:59.1	Appalachie High School near Winder, Georgia.
1:02.0	The suspected shooter is 14 years old.
1:04.9	This morning we continue to remember the four people who were shot and killed at Appalachie High School on Wednesday.
1:10.7	Math teachers, Richard Aspenwall and Christina Irmy, and 14-year-olds,
1:15.2	Christian Angelo and Masonshire Moorhorn.
1:18.8	In each of the previous four years, there have been more than 600 mass shootings in the United States,
1:25.0	almost two a day on average,
1:31.5	leaving communities torn apart by guns and brought together in grief.
1:36.2	I'm Edward Sturton, and this is the documentary on the BBC World Service.
	...

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