In the children’s names

Five years ago, for five minutes between 9:35 and 9:40 a.m., a nation that had already suffered through too many grievous gun massacres was plunged into a new nightmare from which it could not wake. The only thing more sickening than what transpired at Sandy Hook Elementary School that day is the criminal inaction on gun violence by the U.S. Congress every day since.

That Friday morning, a disturbed 20-year-old man whose name and face we should forget killed his mother, then arrived at the local public school in Newtown, Conn.

He aimed an assault rifle at boys and girls in first-grade classrooms, 6- and 7-year- olds, and pulled the trigger again, and again, and again.

Look at the faces of the lives he stole. Remember their names: Charlotte Bacon. Daniel Barden. Olivia Engel. Josephine Gay. Dylan Hockley. Catherine Hubbard. Chase Kowalski. Jesse Lewis. Ana Marquez-Greene. James Mattioli.

Madeleine Hsu. Grace McDonnell. Emilie Parker. Noah Pozner. Jack Pinto. Caroline Previdi. Avielle Richman. Jessica Rekos. Benjamin Wheeler. Allison Wyatt.

Twenty children who would today be funny, curious, wonderful, strange sixth-graders were stolen from their families, taken from the world in a cold metal rage, their bodies ripped apart with a violence of which only a weapon of war is capable.

Six educators were cut down, too: Rachel D’Avino, Dawn Hochsprung, Anne Marie Murphy, Lauren Rousseau, Vicki Soto, Mary Sherlach.

Time has passed, but pain has not dissipated. Hearts have not stopped aching. And as the senseless mass shootings have mounted — in churches, at nightclubs, in concerts, at more schools — a growing chorus of Americans is demanding the nation at last confront its plague of gun violence.

Yet the men and women we elect to represent us in Washington ignore those cries, hearing only the National Rifle Association and others who demand unrestricted access to guns, converting the Constitution’s Second Amendment into a suicide pact.

Some states have made admirable strides. In New York, Gov. Cuomo led the charge to outlaw assault rifles and high-capacity magazines that allow murderers to kill and kill and kill without even bothering to reload. Connecticut’s Gov. Dannel Malloy did the same.

Yet even as more murderous fingers pull more triggers and kill more innocent people by the dozens, Washington lawmakers have failed to lift a finger.

The federal ban on assault weapons and highcapacity magazines, lapsed since 2004, remains off the books.

Despite 95 out of 100 Americans supporting background checks on all gun sales, Congress refuses to act.

For two decades running, the federal government even fails to fund research into ways to prevent more gun violence.

So complete is Republicans’ captivity to the NRA, which spent more than $400 million on political campaigns and lobbying last year, that this year — after a sniper murdered 58 people and injured 546 in Las Vegas — the House voted to unravel state concealed-carry laws, directly contrary to supposedly conservative states’ rights principles. This is bleak. But there is cause for hope. As the madness mounts, a public drumbeat for sane gun regulations is growing. In Virginia’s race for governor this year, a gun-safety advocate beat the NRA’s chosen candidate. In Alabama’s special election for Senate, too.

Sanity can prevail. We can wake from the nightmare. We must wake from the nightmare.