The Rev. Erik J. Richtsteig is the pastor of St. James the Just Catholic Church in Ogden, Utah. He was leading Mass in June 2013 when a man with a gun entered his sanctuary and shot a parishioner.

Karen Swallow Prior is an author and English professor at Liberty University. She has written about carrying a gun while running, arguing that gun ownership can support the Christian call to protect innocent life.

The Rev. Eric S.C. Manning is the pastor of Mother Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., the site of a 2015 mass shooting. He has served in this role since June 2016.

Balhair Singh Dulai is the president of the Sikh Temple of Wisconsin, the site of a 2012 shooting that left six people dead. The temple’s website still features a tribute to victims.

Dallas Drake is co-founder of and senior researcher at the Center for Homicide Research, which compiled a database of church shootings that occurred between 1980 and 2005.

The Rev. James E. Atwood is a retired Presbyterian pastor who serves on the board of The Coalition to Stop Gun Violence. He is the author of America and Its Guns: A Theological Expose and Gundamentalism and Where It Is Taking America.

Jamie Aten is founder and executive director of the Humanitarian Disaster Institute at Wheaton College. He is an expert on religious responses to public emergencies, including hurricanes and mass shootings. Aten is also a founding signer of the Prayers and Action petition, which calls on the evangelical Christian community to do more to address gun […]

Maziyar Ghiabi is a professor and Director for the Centre of Persian And Iranian Studies (CPIS) at the University of Exeter. He studies politics, social history and the history of drug laws, and he is one of the co-authors of a 2018 study on Islam and cannabis.