Entering the process of peace, true peace, means giving up the guns. All of them. This must be done as a first step, not the last. As a Catholic, I had hoped that the leadership of the guns would see the lessons of the last century, in which hundreds of millions were killed by government action, and would come to their senses about guns and militarism. I thought that in this new century giving up guns would be seen as winning, not losing, the conflict.
History needs such models of decency.
There are few. The world should see gunners who willingly gave up their weapons as the heroes and real leaders. Money from the Irish must go only to the nonviolent. The writer, executive director of the Human Rights Action Center, wrote this for The Washington Post.