After Sandy Hook, many people thought that surely Congress would act. The slaughter of 20 6- and 7-year-olds at their school by a 20-year-old mentally disturbed male was impossible to comprehend. The killer used a military-style weapon and high-capacity magazines to kill innocent babies.

In an address to the nation the day after the Dec. 14, 2012, massacre, President Barack Obama said, “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” But Congress did not act.

On May 24, it happened again. In Uvalde, Texas, 19 elementary school children and two teachers were slaughtered by another deranged killer using a military-style weapon that allowed him to kill as many as possible as quickly as possible.

Between Sandy Hook and Uvalde, there have been more mass shootings and killings than can be listed in any newspaper column, so many that the numbers and places blend together in our minds. Americans are being slaughtered at concerts and nightclubs, at work and at places of worship, at malls and grocery stores. And all of them are unspeakable tragedies.

But the slaughter of little children is something much larger than the random act of a madman. A society that cannot protect its children is a dying society. What happens to the children is on all of us. This is a stain on all our souls.

Congress now gets a second chance after turning their backs on the children of Sandy Hook, and the rest of us get a second chance to make our elected officials do their duty.

When the stakes have been high enough, Congress has been able to act with speed and resolve. In 1871, when Southern whites were acting like they had not lost the Civil War, President Ulysses S. Grant got Congress to pass the KKK Act in one month. Then he busted up the Klan and stopped the terrorism and lynchings — at least for five years.

The stakes are very high right now. We must start by stopping the lying. Gun reform is not an assault on American freedom. Think what you will about the Second Amendment, but know that there is no absolute right to own or carry firearms.

Mental illness is not the cause of these slaughters. Mental illness is common in every other country in the world, but our country is the only one with an epidemic of mass killings. The truth is that easy access to weapons of war is the core cause.

As columnist Charles M. Blow wrote the other day in The New York Times, “When guns are easy for good people to get, they are also easy for bad people to get.” As we continue to see, we cannot be much of a society if it is easier to legally get a gun than it is to get a driver’s license.

Maybe it would help if we made members of Congress spend a few moments every night watching their own babies sleep, or bouncing a grandchild on their knee, or seeing the pure joy of a child in a school pageant. After we get them to do that, let’s call the vote on gun reform.

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