Yesterday afternoon in Sparks, Nevada, another school fell victim to an on-campus shooter.

A beloved math teacher, and veteran, was killed, along with two students that were injured at the hand of a semi-automatic weapon in the possession of a 12 year-old student at Sparks Middle School. This 12 year-old would not survive the afternoon.  

In the wake of this tragedy, like those before it, the debate that again and again rises from the ashes is the one of gun control.

Some say that such tragedies are not the time or place to discuss gun laws. Some say, that such a national or political conversation should not come as the cost of preventing communities from healing.

Gun violence is an issue in the United States in a way that comes nowhere close to any other country in the world.

This tragedy takes places only a week after an Austin, Texas student killed himself while his classmates looked on.

The Austin tragedy was a little over a month after an attack in a Winston-Salem, North Carolina high school.

The time between the mass-shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newton, Connecticut was a little less than a year ago – the time between then and now trickled with many more instances of gun violence involving children and our schools.

When the twenty-six elementary students were killed that awful day, the national pulse was slowed. The fear, and pain, and heartbreak of the students at Sandy Hook, and that of their families, and that of their community are and continue to be unimaginable to so many.

But what about in Texas? In North Carolina? In California?

What about gun violence in metropolitan areas across the country? What about the poor child that is killed? What about the black child? What about the child whose parents are receiving social benefits from the state?

Do those deaths not break those communities? Do hearts go ever unbroken? Have we become jaded to the headlines and the newscasts?

What hurts me to the core, what breaks my spirit, isn’t the banter of red states or blue states (although it’s close), it isn’t the NRA or those in its opposition; it’s not even the endless debate over the intention of our Founding Fathers: it’s the burden this void, and our systematic failure has placed on our nation’s children.

No child, not one, should have to be afraid in this way. No elementary school student, or high school student, or college student. No student should ever, within their hearts fear that they are in danger while in the halls of America’s educational institutions.

No parent should ever have to calm the nerves of their child, who is afraid – not afraid of the spelling bee or their math homework, but afraid in a very real way that again and again has been validated in our country.

Something is wrong; it’s broken. And to deny any such thing is to be blinded to the reality that is far to common – it exists from coast to coast, in cities and quaint New England towns.

When we turn the discussion of gun control into anything else but our duty to protect others from this kind of fear, we are hurting only ourselves, and more obviously our children.

Your right to Constitutional buzzwords will never be worth the life of a child. This epidemic, this endless heartache needs to come to an end. If I hear one more person tell me that gun control is ineffective because – “gangsters get their guns illegally anyway…” I just might scream. The guns being used in these instances are not coming from the streets; their serial numbers are not scratched off.

Now’s the time:

End the freeze on gun violence research

Increase emergency response programming in schools

Increase counseling services available to our students

Strengthen background checks on gun sales

Get armor-piercing bullets off the streets

Limit magazines

Increase ban standards on assault weapons

I don’t care what side of the line you stand on. I don’t care if you have an NRA sticker on the back of your car, or if you sign petitions to remove ammunition from big box store shelves.

We cannot wait anymore to solve this problem, we can’t afford it, and our children don’t deserve it. Now is the time to prevent gun violence.