
T-shirts in Snow
Texas Impact’s “Vidas Robadas,” or “Stolen Lives,” is an installation that memorializes people killed by gun violence. United Women in Faith at First United Methodist Church is sponsoring the Denton installation. (Courtesy photo/Cynthia Rives)
Reprinted from the Denton Record-Chronicle | Jan. 14, 2025
As you pass First United Methodist Church on Locust Street in Denton, Texas, you can’t miss them: dozens of T-shirts bearing names, dates and ages. Then there are the white T-shirts bearing a simple message scrawled in black: “Another life stolen.”
Vidas Robadas, or Stolen Lives, is an installation by Texas Impact that memorializes adults and children killed by gun violence. The local church partnered with Texas Impact, an interfaith organization, to honor the lives of Denton County residents ended by firearms. Since 2018, 500 Denton County residents have died because of gun violence, according to the Tarrant County Medical Examiner’s Office.
The United Women in Faith at First United Methodist is sponsoring the installation locally. Each colored T-shirt represents a Denton County resident whose life was taken in a gun homicide. Each white T-shirt represents a life ended by a gun suicide.
“When you look at some of these shirts and you see a name and ‘20 years’ or ‘16 years,’ it hits you that this was a child,” said Cynthia Rives, a member of First United Methodist and United Women of Faith. “Gun violence is spread out from all of us in a sense. Seeing the shirts blowing in the wind, you see how many lives were lost.”
The installation is meant to make passers-by notice, and to instill a bit of discomfort.

Colors of Death
In “Vidas Robadas,” or “Stolen Lives,” each colored T-shirt represents a Denton County resident whose life was taken in a gun homicide, and each white shirt represents a life ended by a gun suicide. (Courtesy photo/Cynthia Rives)
“Vida Robadas is an outward expression of our collective grief over the lives lost to gun violence in Denton County,” said Julie Tipton, United Women in Faith Metro North District president. “We mourn with the families of those who have died, and we continue to work toward solutions that help every resident of our state feel safe and valued.”
The local church group is sponsoring the installation to urge the community to step into a leadership role in the work to end gun violence. And for Denton United Methodists, gun violence is a theological problem. The church’s social principles directly address gun violence, stating: “All forms of violence are detestable. God deplores violence. Jesus calls us to be peacemakers. Guns make violence more deadly and more frequent. For example, domestic violence turns more deadly when guns are available. Firearms are the most common method of suicide in countries where guns are prevalent in private households, according to data collected by the World Health Organization.”
First United Methodist Church co-pastor Scott Gilliland said gun violence is too often diminished into headlines, “ignoring the very personal and localized trauma at the center of each event,” he said in a news release. “On our path to systemic change, ‘Vidas Robadas’ invites us to the spiritual practice of lament. Not simply for the sake of grief, but to honor individuals and focus our grief as a means of initiating faithful action in response.”
Everytown for Gun Safety, an advocacy organization that promotes gun reform, reports that since 2015, more than 19,000 Americans have been shot and wounded or killed in mass shootings. Firearms remain the leading cause of death for children in the United States.
Local residents are joining Texas Impact, First United Methodist Church of Denton and the Texas Coalition to Prevent Gun Violence in a day of action at the Texas Capitol on Feb. 27.
Lucinda Breeding-Gonzales is a staff writer for the Denton Record-Chronicle in Denton, Texas. This article is republished by permission.