A national dialogue on gun violence

The silence is deafening. It always is after anothermass shooting inAmerica.

Contrast thatwith the horror of the audio captured inside Pulse nightclub inOrlando lastweekend, the seemingly non-stop gunfire spewing froman AR-15 rifle.

And perhaps evenmore harrowing, the sounds that greeted first responderswhen they finally were able to enter the club, the sounds of cell phones ringing and buzzing seemingly everywhere, phone calls fromdesperate relatives seeking tomake contactwith their loved ones thatwould never be answered.

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

The “other” silence, the one no one inWashington seems towant to talk about, iswhat it will take forCongress to take seriousaction to address gun violence in this nation.

Severalmembers of Congress fromConnecticut actuallywalked out on the moment of silence. They knowa little bit about gun violence. They represent the area where anothermadman armed with a similar riflewalked into SandyHookElementarySchool and slaughtered innocent children.

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

If the senseless deaths of innocent children cannot shake us into action, nothingwill.

Not an attack on a holiday party in SanBernardino, Calif. Not an armed assault onamovie theater in Colorado. And not a rampage inside apackedclubonaSaturdaynight.

Instead, wewill get politics, and more of the same.

Wewill debatewhetherwe should be branding the problem“radical Islam.” Whetherwe should be banning followers of a certain religion fromentering the country. Whetherwe should be buildingwalls.

Inaway, we’vealreadybuilt awall. It’s the one constructed around having any kind ofmeaningful talk about gun violence in this country.

NelbaMarquez-Greene knows a little bit about that imaginarywall. To her, it’s all too real. She lost her daughterAnaGrace in the Sandy Hook tragedy. Shewas 6 years old.

Upon hearing of the tragedy in Orlando. Marquez-Greene reached out to the families of those killed andwounded in the latestmass shooting inAmerica.

Shewanted themto know she knewexactlywhat theywere going through, andwill continue to face in the difficult days ahead. She’s been there. She’s seen first-hand theworst kind of violence a sickmind and access to guns can deliver.

But shealsoknows thedevastating disappointment that it’s entirely likely that nothingwill happentomake sure it doesnothappen again.

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

Itmakes for jarring reading. Not only reliving the horror of SandyHook and now the newimages of carnage inOrlando, but the knowledge that not even the butchering of those young, innocent lives inwhat had been a securecocoon, the localelementary school, was enough to move us as a nation into action.

“I amsorry that our tragedy here in SandyHookwasn’t enough to save your loved ones,” MarquezGreenewrote.

Therearethosewhosay this goes beyond guns, to somethingmore fundamental that has changed in our society. It strikes at howwe think of ourselves, our neighbors and howwe treat each other.

Insteadwewill get political arguments, talking points, posturing.

In themonths after Sandy Hook, when the lives of 20 kids and six adults were mowed down bya troubledyoungmanwith anAR-15, a newpush surfaced inWashington to expand background checks, ban certain assault-styleweapons and cap the size of ammunition clips.

Oneof thosewhoreached across the aisle in a bipartisan effort to push the legislation through was first-termPennsylvania Republican Sen. Pat Toomey. Itwas a courageous stand, one that carried definite political risks, which belies the criticismhe is now receiving fromDemocratic challengerKatie McGinley. Themeasure eventually failed in the Senate.

And that’swherewe stand. Knee-deep in blood. There have been 19moremass shootings since those babieswere cut down in their classrooms.

Maybe President Obama summed it up best.

It is time for the nation tomake a decision, “if that’s the kind of countrywewant to be.”

It’s either that, orwait for the nextmass shooting. The next vigil. Thenext argument that it’s time for action.

Now is that time.