Congress on guns: Do your job!

Longtime New England Patriots coach, legend and GOAT, Bill Belichick, is most well known for his famous catchphrase, “Do your job,” and that mantra is exactly what people on BOTH sides of the aisle who serve in our dysfunctional Congress should do when it comes to passing common-sense and meaningful gun-control legislation.
That’s the bottom line in the wake of the latest mass shooting at a school in the United States, the killing of 19 elementary school students and two teachers at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas on May 24.
It was the deadliest school shooting in nearly a decade, but it was hardly the only one since 26 people --- 20 of whom were students between the ages of 6 and 7 --- were killed at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., on Dec. 14, 2012.
No, to the contrary, mass shootings were becoming all too commonplace before the Sandy Hook massacre, and have only become even more so in the nearly 10 years since then.
Decisive action by our elected officials --- far too many who are indebted to the powerful National Rifle Association – has eluded the country for far too long, and it’d be foolhardy to think that legislators will be able to reach any kind of compromise now.
But if they can’t, then they should explain --- without the rhetoric of the far left and far right to whom way too many are beholden – to the parents of the 19 students who were senselessly slaughtered by the mad gunman in Uvalde, Texas, why they couldn’t do anything to prevent 18-year-olds like him from going into a store and buying high-powered automatic weapons such as the two AR-15 weapons that he bought without raising so much as an eyebrow.
That shouldn’t happen, plain and simple!
Their inability to agree on anything at all related to gun control --- universal background checks, waiting periods for all gun purchases in all states and making such high-powered guns off-limits to teenagers, for starters --- would be a hard sell to the parents of the latest victims of yet another madman who chose to attack our most vulnerable population: students.
That’s why, the legislators on both sides should be locked into a conference room on Capitol Hill for as long as it takes to reach a reasonable compromise on a meaningful gun control bill.
Anything less would be a slap in the face to the hundreds of victims of gun violence since 1999, when the massacre at Columbine High School in Colorado happened.
The time to act --- and for Congress to do its job --- has long passed.