More than 200 people attended an emotional candlelight vigil in Red Bank on Wednesday night to remember the victims of the Orlando nightclub shootings. Watch video
RED BANK - They were young and old, male and female, Catholic and Jewish, black and white, gay and straight.
And more than 200 of them came to borough's Municipal Building on Wednesday night to mourn the loss of 49 people they never met - 49 people who became the victims of a terrorist gunman while in a place where they should've felt the safest.
However, Christian Fuscarino, the executive director of Garden State Equality, informed those who gathered for the emotional candlelight vigil that they actually knew the victims of Sunday's shootings in a gay nightclub in Orlando very well.
"Some of them (are) brothers and sisters, gay uncles, lesbian aunts, trans cousins. We know who they are, because they are us," Fuscarino said. "They just happened to be in the right place, at the right time, with the wrong person. An individual who entered our home, our place of safety and comfort, and took that all away."
Red Bank Mayor Pasquale Menna - who earlier in the week condemned the Orlando shootings as a "crime against humanity" - presided over the vigil, which he called a "reflection of our own dignity as a county."
The ceremony featured state, county and local officials, religious leaders and advocates for various causes, including equality and gun safety.
Fr. Robert Kaeding, the pastor of the Church of the Precious Blood in Monmouth Beach, said the community was "numb and paralyzed" following yet another hateful attack.
"We're told that this is the largest such massacre in our history. But it seems as though every time we hear of one of these massacres it's always the largest, there always seems to be more," Kaeding said. "Whether they are school children in Sandy Hook, people at prayer in South Carolina, moviegoers in Colorado or these young gay people who gathered last Saturday evening for community, for love, for support, for friendship - it's always hate that attacks and destroys, and so we're numbed by it. ... So tonight we gather together, we pray to be able to end the hate that fuels the violence and to end the fear that divides us."
Rabbi Marc Kline, of the Monmouth Reform Temple in Tinton Falls, said people have been using the massacre for political fodder, but argued that it is not a matter of politics.
"It's about lives," he said. "Folks, this is about protecting Americans, this is about protecting humans. Special lobby groups cannot look victims in the eyes and say: 'Gee, I didn't mean for this to happen to you.' We have to hold each other through the nightmare and we have to end the nightmare."
Kline then used the platform to argue against the sale of assault rifles in the United States and that there should be "at least as strong" education, registration, mandatory insurance and regulation requirements for guns as there are for cars.
"We need to do more than to mourn and grieve. We need to do more than pray. Our grief and our prayers need to be causes to take action to ban weapons not protected by the Second Amendment and to regulate those that are," he said. "Congress needs to hear our voices and we need to vote only for those who will listen."
Rob Spahr may be reached at rspahr@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheRobSpahr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.