Everyone is hurting over the recent mass shootings. The fact they happen at all is a symptom of other kinds of hurt in this Country right now: a pathos at an individual level that has to do with people feeling alienated, lonely, angry, desperate and vengeful. Tragically, these individuals are lashing out and devastating entire communities, families and ending the lives of people they don’t even know.

There was a time when it was believed the shooters were seeking notoriety. Sadly, there have been so many mass shootings in this country, very few people even remember who the shooters are now, or where the shootings happened, or how many victims were killed, or know anything about the ones who might have survived but may not feel safe anywhere, anymore.

The problem would be easier to solve if it weren’t just sick individuals acting out. They’re acting out at a time when the average person is more interested in repeating talking points for a special interest group than they are in posing the question, “What can we do TODAY to ensure Americans’ safety in their everyday lives? What can we do to bring the two sides together to better understand the problem?” Why can’t people with new ideas be the loudest voices in the room, or the ones whose ideas or talking points are being repeated family member to family member, colleague to colleague, neighbor to neighbor. It’s like the average person in this Country considers themselves a talking head now who has an obligation to represent one side or the other.

The obligation we have is to each other.

We don’t owe a special interest group, a political party or the media our energy. We owe our friends, neighbors and fellow Americans our concern, commitment and action. The time for a verbal volley is long gone. The only thing any of us want to hear on the issue is something new.

The officer killed in the Supermarket in Boulder had seven kids.

It isn’t what is wrong with them, it is what is wrong with us. We know we can do better as a country and we keep electing people who aren’t willing to enforce expanded background checks, more closely track and monitor gun sales, penalize sellers who don’t follow the laws that exist and require families and individuals to be liable if they know a person is mentally unstable and armed.

You have to register and insure a car in this country because of the risk it poses. Maybe it is time to let the Commerce Committee take a turn if the Judiciary Committee can’t resolve the issue of keeping the average American safe. Maybe if people have to buy insurance for their weapons, they will be more responsible with them. Maybe if a private gun seller has to carry insurance the way a real estate brokerage does in case it is ever involved in a sale that wasn’t fully vetted, they will be more careful who they’re selling to and what they’re selling them.

We need to have a temporary freeze on all sales of military style weapons today. We need a Federal commission to study the issue and make recommendations, the way we have done when we came together as Americans before after other acts of terrorism. One American hurt at the grocery store, in their classrooms and at their workplace is one too many.

We do a better job inspecting the meat on our dinner plates than we do protecting people at the grocery store where they bought it.

It is so disturbing that when the mob went to the Capitol, they went with a grievance against specific individuals. They named names: Pence, Pelosi. It was a bizarre and ultimately ineffective attempt at a revolution against Government Tyranny, that I believe started with the issue of protecting gun rights.

How ironic that faceless, nameless Americans are being targeted in churches and schools, at the Office and supermarket by people who don’t even know their names, who should never had had access to a gun, who are using their weapons to be heard. We hear them alright and we heard and saw the protesters at the Capitol. Now Washington needs to hear from everyday citizens who want to stop the carnage.

We don’t always know the victims names, we may or may not have known them personally. But someone did. They are complete innocents. Maybe it is time for the Innocents to have their own revolution. What if all Americans who care and want to force our leaders to act decide not to register their cars in 2022. What if we all just stop buying insurance on our homes and vehicles, until all guns and their owners, sellers and users carry it? Because we owe the victims at least that.

And we owe the average American the promise that something is being done to prevent more mass shootings.

You get compensated if your house is destroyed in a flood, if you have a fender bender that is the other driver’s fault or if a gun collection is stolen out of your residence, whether or not you locked up your weapons.

But if an individual seller skirts laws and doesn’t file the required paperwork, fingerprint protocol or background check, what happens?

These victims deserve compensation. And we deserve guarantees that people allowed to purchase, sell, hunt with or collect deadly weapons understand the liability that incurs.

It’s time reasonable people are heard.