Gun shy

Three more children are dead by gunfire.

And by the time you read this, you may be uncertain of which shooting I am referencing. 

Because as I angrily type, the number of deaths attributed to guns this year alone ticks up past 10,000 according to the Gun Violence Archive. Four-hundred-and-fifteen of those killed thus far were children and teens.

In the last two decades, the U.S. has seen a forty-two percent increase in the rate of child firearm deaths while all comparably large and wealthy countries have seen child firearm deaths fall since 2000. And it's not just mass shootings. According to the Centers for Disease Control, the firearm suicide rate among children and teens has increased by 66 percent over the last ten years.

That is an unconscionable number.

And while the number of deaths keeps growing by the day, what won't change in that time is how this nation reacts. There will be thoughts and prayers offered by our civic leaders. There will be calls for gun reform that will be met with admonitions for it somehow being too soon. 

There will be expansive media coverage with photos and graphics and the unspoken hope that this time something will give.

But no one will give an inch. 

Instead, those who find themselves at the business end of a microphone will befoul the air with all the reasons we can't have safety and security without amassing personal arsenals and encasing ourselves inside windowless walls. 

I can't help but shake my head listening to news reporter after news reporter after news reporter follows up by asking school psychologists for a minute's worth of advice on how we can talk to our kids.

How can we talk to our kids? 

"You think they're wrong," my husband asks.

"I don't think anything they have to say will matter if we aren't willing to acknowledge that guns are the problem we can solve," I responded.

"I think we should be asking our elected representatives why they have more prayers than constructive thoughts about this dilemma, and why we keep collecting the same soundbites from the traumatized."

Their answer - more police, more fortification of schools, and, inevitably, more guns - is free of credible evidence that it works. 

If it did, the number-one cause of death in American children and adolescents surely wouldn't be guns. 

Mental health professionals can only do so much. But our leaders are in the citizen-powered position to do much more. 

Why aren't all the microphones pointing to them? Why aren't we demanding to know what they plan to do to ensure that all guns remain accounted for and in safe hands? 

There's much we can do to affect substantive change: Background checks, licensing and license renewals, annual inspections, mandated liability insurance, and continuing safety training are just a few common sense requirements we could impose.

We could make accessing a gun as onerous as accessing abortion. 

We could value life more than we value live ammo.

We could demand our living, breathing, laughing, loving children get to live their lives in peace.

How can we face our kids if we don't?