The conversation is becoming so familiar. Yesterday morning we were talking with volunteers working on a project at the church. One is the mother of a high school student and a middle school student. Another is a retired teacher. The high school where the son attends and where a friend of the retired teacher is principal had been locked down yesterday due to a phoned-in threat of an active shooter on campus. It turned out that there was no shooter and after a careful search by law enforcement, it joined another school in our county and one in the county to the south who had received the false calls yesterday.

The false calls are disruptive. They upset students beyond the day in which they occur. They fill parents with fear and dread. We know the routine. When a threat is perceived, the school is locked down. Parents are advised to stay away from the campus while officials conduct a thorough search to make sure that no real threat exists. What is often left unsaid is that all of us know that the threat could be real. School shootings in the United States are at an all time high. At least 257 shootings have occurred on school campuses in our country this year, surpassing the 250 total for 2021. We have seen the impromptu memorials. We have watched anxious parents awaiting news. We have felt the pain of entire communities as they lose trust in the ability of schools to provide a safe place for learning.

And, of course, it isn’t just schools. Last night it was a Walmart in Chesapeake, Virginia, with up to 10 people killed and others injured. Saturday night it was Club Q in Colorado Springs with five dead and 17 wounded.

Active shooter drills are becoming a part of school for our children. It would be irresponsible to ignore the very real threat that is before our communities. Mass shooting events are so common in the news that we have barely learned the details of one before the next is reported. School shootings are an every-week occurrence in our country.

Mass shootings, while gathering the headlines, are only part of the tragedy of gun violence in our country. Individual deaths rip apart families every day. Hand guns are the most common weapon used in suicide in the United States. Suicide is the leading killer of teenagers and young adults. It is the leading cause of death of active duty law enforcement officers. It is the leading cause of death of military veterans.

It does not have to be this way. Other modern countries provide safe schools for their children and people are allowed to go about their lives without fear of becoming innocent victims. The culture of death in the United States makes a mockery of every so-called “pro-life” politician, who lacks the courage to stand up to the lobbyists of the gun industry. Common sense legislation like red flag laws and expanded background checks could make a difference.

Providing safety for our communities does not require hunters to give up their guns. It does not require an end to citizen ownership of firearms. It does require legislatures to place controls on firearm sales that are consistent with the existing interpretation of the second amendment of the constitution. It might eventually require a judges to have the courage to take a closer look at the constitution than has been the case recently.

The shooter in the Virginia Walmart last night was hardly a well regulated militia. The shooter at Club Q wasn’t a well regulated militia. The right of the people to keep and bear arms does not have to be infringed by the presence of regulations on the use and distribution of weapons.

One of the problems with the gun debate in our country is that we have lost the ability to engage in informed conversation about firearms. Those who don’t understand firearms call for absolute bans on categories of weapons without understanding how those weapons are used by those who participate in shooting sports and other safe and legal activities. Manufacturers and sellers of firearms use fear to promote sales. A common sense conversation about how the constitution can be respected and the rights it defends protected while at the same time providing the constitution-promised regulation that is necessary to the security of a free State is absent from the public discourse in our country.

We are better than this.

My neighbors who have NRA stickers in the windows of their vehicles are intelligent and thoughtful people capable of engaging in reasoned conversations. They have children who attend the public schools and they fear for their safety. We have the ability to disagree and continue to work together for solutions to complex problems. I who own no guns and have no need for weapons am not out to confiscate the rifles of my friends who are hunters or the handguns of the law enforcement officers who are close to me. I don’t think that we disagree that the employees and customers of Walmart deserve safety in a store where firearms and ammunition are sold. I don’t think we disagree that people should be allowed to go out socially and dance in a club without fearing for their lives. We are capable of thoughtful and careful conversation about real world solutions to gun violence.

We need legislators and judges who are willing to engage in those conversations without reducing the conversation to simple “either-or” solutions. We need representatives and governmental officials who aren’t beholden to big money backers who want to control their voices in debate and their votes on legislation. We don’t need holders of extreme views to be the only ones who write and propose laws for our states and nation.

We are better than this.

We are capable of engaging with each other to solve these problems. And yet we have been silent too often. We have feared the reactions of our neighbors when we should have spoken out. We have chosen sides when we are all in this together.

There have been too many deaths, too many tears, too much fear. Let’s talk.