I lightly call my summer blog post “Surviving Summer Funtimes.” And honestly, I have no reason to believe my children or family or neighbors will necessarily get to survive anything anymore. We all go out in public, to school, to work, to concerts and restaurants, to places of worship, to the outside, and we run the risk of not returning.

We are a violent nation peppered with violent people who will fight to the death (yours or mine rather than theirs) for their right to let everyone know they can kill.

And they are unleashed. Untethered. As unctuous as their NRA spokespeople who dismiss any attempts at discussion or care or alternatives with sniffy cries of amendments and cold, dead hands.

They are as dead-eyed and Bible-quoting as the politicians in D.C. who take their hands off the NRA money long enough to raise them in a shrug. “Can’t do anything! We love our guns! It’s mental health! It’s video games! It’s lone wolves! Why make law when people will break it? I need my guns in case the government comes to take them! I HAVE A RIGHT!”

Must we sacrifice our children’s lives and well-being in exchange for your desire to let the world know that you are angry? That you are afraid? That you can kill because you think you’re the good guy and you prefer not to use your words? That the guns make you a god, taker of life if you so choose? And if you are one of the ones who insists he is a responsible gun owner, how much of that are you willing to squeeze — maybe just a little bit? —  just to help weed out some of the problems? Or is your answer that all these shootings are acceptable so that you can have all your guns, whenever you want, where ever you want, the instant you want them?

Let’s talk about my rights and my children’s for a minute. What about our unalienable (and peskily self-evident) right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, which these mass murders and dearth of common-sense gun laws infringe upon.

Anguished, I wrote this piece about guns two years ago.

I wrote this other piece, a humor-ish piece about the NRA, a few months ago. Still anguished.

And I write this blog today, ready to suddenly have swarms of the fringe get in my comments. They will be deleted.

I didn’t hug my children tighter this morning before they left the house because I hug them tightly every morning before they leave the house. I say a small wisp of something resembling a prayer to any willing deity that they return at the end of the day.

Please consider joining Moms Demand Action, consider supporting the Sandy Hook Promise, consider contacting your legislators (Resistbot is great for this, but phone calls are best, I think). And then, please, do it.

Because we need every voice to say “enough.”