It’s time for action on guns, not hand-wringing

I am tired of hearing, after the mass shooting in Las Vegas, that now is the time to mourn, not to politicize. What if we had done this throughout our history?

After Pearl Harbor, what if FDR had said we must spend our time mourning? Or in 2001, after the World Trade Center, what if George W. Bush had decided to mourn those losses and ignore a response?

Yes, in those cases it was a foreign power or group who killed so many. But for a tragedy created from within, what if Abraham Lincoln had decided to allow the Southern to states to secede unchallenged, because to talk about slavery was “politicizing”?

We were fortunate to have brave and honest men who knew that mourning and creating policy go together. But now it seems we are not only in a time devoid of real leaders, but the ones elected to Congress have have been bought and paid for by the NRA.

Intelligent and reasonable gun control policy would not prevent all murders with weapons of war rained down upon children in schools, concert-goers, movie fans, and those walking down the streets near their homes. But it would lessen the occurrence of these horrors.

A country that professes to have any interest in the well-being of its citizens would work together to end the madness of gun-related deaths. Can we be that country? Or will we be forever mourning the deaths that will most certainly occur, with useless hand-wringing, thoughts, and prayers?

This story was originally published October 10, 2017 at 9:58 AM with the headline "It’s time for action on guns, not hand-wringing."