There is a parable, as the Rev. Susan Presley remembers, that tells the story of a small village near a river. In the river, the villagers would see babies floating, so they built their society around ways to save them as they came down river.

When one villager questioned why no one went up river to see why the babies were there in the first place, the rest of the villagers wondered what would become of them if they fixed the problem their society was built on.

Presley’s new book, “Shooting For Hope,” is taking the “upriver” approach to address mass shootings and gun violence in the U.S.

“I want to go upriver and find out what we can do before a person is angry enough to pick up a gun,” she said.

Presley has lived in Mexico for three years after taking the First Presbyterian Church job and currently serves as president of the local ministerial alliance.

Outside of church, she is an involved community member as a Kiwanis Club member, former C2C board member, former speech and debate competition judge for both Mexico High School and Missouri Military Academy and has even made an appearance in the 2023 Presser Hall production of War of Worlds.

She is also an avid writer who, before going to seminary, got a communications degree at Truman University.

“Even before college when I was in my 20s and 30s, I owned a medical transcription business but at the same time I was doing freelance articles for journals and that kind of thing,” she said.

Her first book, a religious humor novel titled “Hezekiah,” was written and self-published with the help of her friend Max Hazell 10 years ago. Around the same time, toward the end of seminary, Presley noticed the increase in reports of mass shootings in the media.

“I wondered, ‘Was there really an increase or are we just hearing about it more?’ but then I also wondered, ‘In each mass shooting, if no gun had been available, would that person still have hurt people?’” said Presley. “My final question was, ‘Why do we want to hurt each other so bad?’”

These questions drove Presley to study and gather data regarding mass shootings in the U.S. One of her primary data sources came from Stanford University.

“I kept noticing that I was finding mass shootings that they didn’t have listed so I contacted them,” she said.

Presley’s inquiry on the missing data led her to discover that gang- or drug-related shootings had been left out by the team due to a “lack of information.” Her discomfort with the misrepresentation prompted Stanford to invite her to be part of the study team.

“After a while, maybe six months, the person in charge of the project left Stanford and dropped the project,” said Presley. “They told me I could use the data and do whatever with it so I continued to work.”

Now, Presley has data from all the mass shootings in the U.S. from 1940 to the end of 2022. There are over 5,000 shootings with about 50 data points on each shooting.

“What I think is already covered plenty are people who are concerned about guns; should we take away people's guns, or are we more worried about second amendment rights?” said Presley.

Presley said there are people who are properly educated working on those issues and there are also people who want to build better security and churches that are working towards that.

Her book, she said, is on neither of those issues.

“My book is specifically targeted at churches and what we can do but this also applies to schools, to businesses, to any space really,” Presley said.

Presley will be at Slumberland Furniture tonight from 6-8 p.m. to promote her new book. There will be a reading from Presley and light refreshments available.

To find out more or get in touch with Presley, visit ww.shootingforhope.org or email weareshootingforhope@gmail.com