To:  Federal lawmakers:

Please spare us your thoughts and prayers if they are all you have to offer after another day like Wednesday.

Of all the vacant messages coming out of Washington, nothing resonates less than your thoughts and prayers following one more mass shooting.

Thoughts and prayers weren’t enough after Columbine.

Or Virginia Tech.

Or Fort Hood.

Or Aurora, Colorado.

Or Sandy Hook,

You may remember Sandy Hook Elementary School, where 20 kindergartners and first-graders were killed in Newtown, Connecticut.

 Then again, maybe you don’t. You sure didn’t do anything.

Your thoughts and prayers also didn’t matter much after San Bernadino.

Or Orlando.

Or Las Vegas.

Or Sutherland Springs, Texas.

And they won’t mean much now, after Parkland, Florida.

This list of mass shootings represents just a few in the United States where 10 or more people have been killed since the Columbine shooting in 1999.

This tweet, delivered by CNN analyst Juliette Kayyem contains a sobering fact: “Columbine is now just the fifth deadliest school shooting in the US.”

There have been 18 shootings at schools so far in 2018, including two suicides. Eighteen in less than 50 days. 

What are you going to do?

Many have lost hope you will ever do anything after the lack of action post-Sandy Hook. 

If 20 dead 6- and 7-year-olds couldn’t lead to change, was anything really ever going to do it?

Still, many Americans hope that someone — a leader from any party or any state — will to take the lead and say enough! And to say no to the NRA and its dollars.

Tell us why expanded background checks are too much. 

Tell us why a civilian needs to own an AR-15 rifle.

Tell us why someone’s right to own an assault rifle overrides someone else’s right to be safe in school, or at the movies or a concert.

Lost in the Second Amendment fervor in the wake of these tragedies are these two words: Well regulated.

We need you to stand up and lead, with specific plans that bring about real change.

We need days like Wednesday to become a troubling part of our past instead of the nightmare in everyone’s present and future.

This editorial first appeared in The Daily Item in Sunbury, Pennsylvania.