It’s really sad that so many people have become so desensitized to school shootings over the years. We now just treat them as some kind of unexplainable natural disaster over which we have no power. When Hurricane Sandy hit, people prayed for the victims but *also* sought out the reasons for why NYC was so unprepared and what they need to do to avoid another similar disaster in the future. But when it comes to yet another horrific school shooting, in which dozens of people (including 18 children!!) are peppered to death with endless sprays of ammunition from automatic weapons, all people do now is pray for the victims – and then go back to burying their heads in the sand when it comes to trying to figure out what we can do to protect our kids in the future.

The NRA’s relentlessly successful campaign to make taboo any discussion of responsible and rational gun control has cowed the overwhelming majority of us. So much so that most of us mindlessly parrot the same focus-group tested lines the NRA has drilled into our collective consciousness for so long: “Just pray for the victims, let’s not debate,” “This is not the time,” “You’re so cruel for politicizing a tragedy,” and on and on.

In the aftermath of yet another senseless school shooting, we are again presented with a deadly serious choice that none of us can avoid making: either (1) stick your heads back in the sand and push our country blindly forward through a neverending string of similar tragedies that we continue to do nothing about, or (2) stand up and join a chorus of other voices screaming out for our country to finally conduct a serious and fact-based inquiry into what we can do to mitigate the risk of hundreds more murders from which some of the blood also spills onto our hands.