After two mass shootings tore our nation apart over the weekend, President Donald Trump, Texas Lt. Gov. Dan Patrick and acting White House chief of staff Mick Mulvaney took up a series of familiar refrains: The problem is mental health. Or movies. Or video games. Or social media. But we know better than these National Rifle Association talking points. Our nation's gun violence crisis is caused by easy access to guns.
American video games and movies are distributed - and loved - around the world. Every country grapples with how to treat mental illness. But only in the United States is our gun homicide rate 25 times the average of other high-income countries. Some, like Mulvaney, who said that "you cannot be a white supremacist and be normal in the head," say that the alleged El Paso, Texas, shooter, who appears to have posted an anti-immigration manifesto, was mentally ill. But white supremacy is not a mental illness. It's an ideology encouraged by the president and too many of our nation's leaders, and combined with our nation's lax gun laws, it's deadly.
This past weekend, nearly 2,000 Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action volunteer leaders - 700 of whom are gun violence survivors - were in Washington for our annual training conference as we continue our fight for sensible gun laws. People came in from all 50 states and the District of Columbia to celebrate their wins and learn from one another.
As we gathered for lunch on Saturday, our volunteers heard reports of an active shooter in El Paso. Our Texas volunteers rushed out of the room to be together and check on loved ones. Soon, the worst was confirmed. That night, when we typically host a gala to reward volunteers for their hard work, hundreds of volunteers instead headed to the White House to hold a vigil and demand that our Senate and president do their jobs and put an end to our gun violence crisis.
The next morning, we woke to news of yet another mass shooting - this time in Dayton, Ohio, where nine people were shot and killed and more than 20 were wounded.
And these were only the shootings that made national headlines. Also over the weekend, 46 people were shot in Chicago, seven fatally. And in recent weeks, gun violence has devastated communities in Baltimore; Gilroy, California; Los Angeles; Virginia Beach, Virginia and Brooklyn in New York.
This isn't just about school shootings or mass shootings. It's about the fact that there isn't a parent left in the United States who doesn't fear that their child could be next, and that there is no place any American, of any age, can count on being safe. It's about Americans having to stand up to gunmen because leaders in the Senate and White House won't stand up for us.
Gun violence kills 100 Americans every day. This is a public health crisis that demands urgent action.
The American people don't need convincing: 93 percent of Americans want background checks for all gun buyers, including 87 percent of gun owners and 89 percent of Republicans. Yet we haven't even passed the most basic of federal gun laws - like requiring a background check on all gun sales or passing a red-flag law.
Some lawmakers say that this legislation won't prevent massacres like the ones we saw this past weekend, but states with background checks on all gun sales see fewer gun homicides.
Senators may be taking an unearned vacation, but we aren't. So starting today, Moms Demand Action and Students Demand Action will unleash the full power of our grass-roots movements to pressure senators to listen to Americans, and to pass a law to require background checks on all gun sales and strong federal red-flag legislation.
And if senators don't care that communities are being devastated by a crisis they helped create, they might care about political reality.
In the midterm elections, gun safety advocates helped flip seven statehouses and give the House of Representatives a gun-sense majority. The political calculus on gun safety changed. Democratic presidential candidates are speaking out on the debate stage and at town halls, and, for the first time, they're competing to be the strongest on gun safety. All of this is happening because Americans are fed up and terrified.
Acts of gun violence are not acts of God. It's time for our elected leaders to finally listen to the vast majority of Americans instead of a vocal minority of gun extremists. Pass laws at the federal level that we've seen save lives in the states where they've been enacted. Stop playing politics and serving us platitudes. It's time to do your jobs.
Shannon Watts is the founder of Moms Demand Action for Gun Sense in America.