A national dialogue on gun violence

The silence is deafening. It always is after another mass shooting in America.

Contrast that with the horror of the audio captured inside Pulse nightclub in Orlando last weekend, the seemingly non-stop gunfire spewing from an AR-15 rifle.

And perhaps even more harrowing, the sounds that greeted first responders when they finally were able to enter the club, the sounds of cell phones ringing and buzzing seemingly everywhere, phone calls from desperate relatives seeking to make contact with their loved ones that would never be answered.

We also got one more moment of silence in the Capitol in Washington, D.C., in honor of the victims, 49 lives cut short by another incident of gun violence.

The “other” silence, the one no one in Washington seems to want to talk about, is what it will take for Congress to take serious action to address gun violence in this nation.

Several members of Congress from Connecticut actually walked out on the moment of silence. They know a little bit about gun violence. They represent the area where another madman armed with a similar rifle walked into Sandy Hook Elementary School and slaughtered innocent children.

The sad truth of the matter was hammered home in the months after that horrific tragedy.

If the senseless deaths of innocent children cannot shake us into action, nothing will.

Not an attack on a holiday party in San Bernardino, Calif. Not an armed assault on a movie theater in Colorado. And not a rampage inside a packed club on a Saturday night.

Instead, we will get politics, and more of the same.

We will debate whether we should be branding the problem “radical Islam.” Whether we should be banning followers of a certain religion from entering the country. Whether we should be building walls.

In a way, we’ve already built a wall. It’s the one constructed around having any kind of meaningful talk about gun violence in this country.

Nelba Marquez-Greene knows a little bit about that imaginary wall. To her, it’s all too real. She lost her daughter Ana Grace in the Sandy Hook tragedy. She was 6 years old.

Upon hearing of the tragedy in Orlando. Marquez-Greene reached out to the families of those killed and wounded in the latest mass shooting in America.

She wanted them to know she knew exactly what they were going through, and will continue to face in the difficult days ahead. She’s been there. She’s seen first-hand the worst kind of violence a sick mind and access to guns can deliver.

But she also knows the devastating disappointment that it’s entirely likely that nothing will happen to make sure it does not happen again.

Marquez-Greene actually posted a letter on her daughter’s memorial Facebook page to the families now reeling in the midst of the Orlando tragedy.

It makes for jarring reading. Not only reliving the horror of Sandy Hook and now the new images of carnage in Orlando, but the knowledge that not even the butchering of those young, innocent lives in what had been a secure cocoon, the local elementary school, was enough to move us as a nation into action.

“I am sorry that our tragedy here in Sandy Hook wasn’t enough to save your loved ones,” Marquez-Greene wrote.

There are those who say this goes beyond guns, to something more fundamental that has changed in our society. It strikes at how we think of ourselves, our neighbors and how we treat each other.

Instead we will get political arguments, talking points, posturing.

In the months after Sandy Hook, when the lives of 20 kids and six adults were mowed down by a troubled young man with an AR-15, a new push surfaced in Washington to expand background checks, ban certain assault-style weapons and cap the size of ammunition clips.

One of those who reached across the aisle in a bipartisan effort to push the legislation through was first-term Pennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. It was a courageous stand, one that carried definite political risks, which belies the criticism he is now receiving from Democratic challenger Katie McGinley. The measure eventually failed in the Senate.

And that’s where we stand. Knee-deep in blood. There have been 19 more mass shootings since those babies were cut down in their classrooms.

Maybe President Obama summed it up best.

It is time for the nation to make a decision, “if that’s the kind of country we want to be.”

It’s either that, or wait for the next mass shooting. The next vigil. The next argument that it’s time for action.

Now is that time.