Like many Americans, the shootings at Sandy Hook Elementary in Newtown, Connecticut caused Chris McEnroe to think about the second amendment right to bear arms.

A writer as well as an English teacher at Tabor Academy, McEnroe recently shared his response to the tragedy on “This I Believe – Rhode Island,” a Rhode Island Public Radio program featuring short personal statements.

The Marion resident said the incident challenged his “sense of hope.” After seeing the photos of the deceased, he said, “I was really overwhelmed for a couple of hours. I went into a room and let it wash over me.”

McEnroe has written a number of opinion pieces over the years, and was inspired to again after hearing his own minister’s words during a vigil for the victims.

“The minister begged that we as a community start talking. He begged we listen as well. I have been feeling small ever since,” wrote McEnroe.

In his classes, McEnroe said he often uses literature as a way of evaluating culture.

Writing, he explained, “gives us the skills to process things like that, using them as a way to grow.”

With his “This I Believe” piece, McEnroe said he is, in some way, accountable to the school shootings.

“The [gun control] debate had produced something quite horrible in me – complacence that school shootings are a necessary consequence of living in a free American society. But I don’t believe this,” he wrote.

McEnroe adopts his minister’s exhortation to engaging in community with his essay.

“Everyone is focusing on the big event, but it’s probably more important to think about all the small decisions or events that lead to [the tragedy],” said McEnroe.

As a member of a small community not unlike Newtown, McEnroe wants people to ask, “What lessons does this have for us? How can we take care of people on the fringes day to day?”

“Change has to be more than just passing a law,” he said.

Change means rejecting the idea that shootings will simply continue, McEnroe said.

“I can only believe it if I stop accepting them as inevitable, if I start listening carefully and speaking as if someone’s life depends on it.”

Listen to Chris McEnroe reading his essay here.