Let’s remind politicians that we love our children more than guns. 

The day after The Covenant School shooting here in Nashville, my heart dropped into my stomach as my children got out of the car at school. The feeling is a mix of anxiety, fear and anger that I’m sure many parents have experienced following a school shooting.

I worry about many things as a parent, but my children dying from gun violence at school shouldn’t be one of them. And it’s not an irrational fear. Children who die before their 19th birthday in the United States most often die from being shot by a gun. 

Gunshot wounds are now the leading cause of death in children, replacing auto accidents, which was the biggest threat to their lives for decades prior. 

The long-standing danger of auto accidents for children is one of the reasons there are so many laws that regulate driving. There are speed limits. You have to pass a test to get a driver’s license. Small children have to be in a car seat. The list goes on.

As a parent, I protect my children by using common sense. Buckle up. Wear a helmet. Put on a life vest. Look both ways. Live a full life, but live it safely.

We need to use the same level of common sense when it comes to guns. Data show that states with stronger gun safety laws have less gun violence. Seat belts save lives, and it turns out, so do universal background checks.

We, as Americans, are actually more united on this issue than our politicians. One public opinion poll after another has shown that a vast majority of Americans want laws to improve gun safety, including a majority of those who own guns. 

The gun lobby in our country has built a false narrative that choosing to support Second Amendment rights and choosing to support gun safety measures are mutually exclusive – but they’re not. Most of us can agree that there are a lot of options in between the two extremes of “take up all the guns” and “everyone who wants one should have one.” 

So why aren’t politicians on board? Because they fear the National Rifle Association’s political influence and they want to stay in power. As a result, Congress has done very little to strengthen common-sense gun safety laws and many state government leaders – including ours here in Tennessee – have chosen to make it easier for anyone to obtain a gun. 

But this is a democracy, and we, normal citizens, have influence too. It’s time to use it. It’s time for us to remind our politicians that we love our children more than guns, and they should too. And if they continue to ignore this problem, we will find more compassionate leaders to replace them. 

After every mass shooting that dominates headlines in our country, public dialogue and media reports obsess over whatever detail was unique about that situation – how the shooter gained entry, the motive or mental state of the assailant, or how the police responded. 

I’m not saying those things aren’t important or worth addressing. But we’ve allowed them to be distractions from addressing the common thread in all incidents of gun violence – the weapons, so easily obtained, used to end innocent lives.  

Should we also address mental health in this country? Absolutely. But most individuals with a mental illness are not violent. Meanwhile, all guns are deadly. 

There’s not only unity on the need for gun safety laws, but also much agreement on what “common-sense gun safety” means. Background checks, red flag laws, and bans on high-capacity magazines all have strong public support from most Americans. 

This is not a matter of one side needing to convince the other. In a country that feels so deeply divided on so many issues, when we find smart solutions most of us can agree on, we need to run with them.

That said, there are policy experts far more qualified than I am to propose specific legislation Congress and individual states should enact. My expertise is that I’m a mom who knows we need to do a better job of protecting our children from the dangers of guns. 

I’m also a communications professional who still believes real problems can be solved with the right conversations. The key is to make our voices louder than the NRA, so that politicians will choose to listen to us over them.