Forty-one days ago, the loved ones of 20 children and six adults in Newtown, CT were plunged into a nightmare. But we all know that story. Tragically, deep down we probably all knew it was coming – the next mass shooting. After Tucson, AZ, after Aurora, CO, after Oak Creek, WI, we wept, held hands, shook our fists and then resigned ourselves to the worst because crazy people are crazy. What can you do? And the worst happened again.

This time could be different though. Within days of the Newtown shootings, Vice President Biden led a panel to consider gun policies. Last week, President Obama announced his plan to introduce new gun legislation—from changes in gun regulations to investing in unbiased research on American gun crimes, which is disturbingly scarce. These measures are realistic and can make America safer, if Congress will only resist its customary inclination to stall.

We can neither allow our politicians to perpetuate the status quo, nor stop at solutions that only look good on paper, putting special interests above America’s well-being. For years, anti-gun control lobbyists, primarily the National Rifle Association (NRA), have quelled attempts to limit gun access and lobbied against funding gun violence research. The NRA website declares these gun regulation “schemes” contradict the Second Amendment and don’t really reduce crime. In light of the Newtown shootings, the NRA simply proposed increasing armed security in schools.

I have several problems with this attitude. I won’t argue against the right to self-defense, but assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines, which allow shooters to fire dozens of rounds without reloading, aren’t meant to defend. They are meant to kill en masse. Increasing security in schools may be beneficial, but the NRA’s proposal doesn’t do enough to keep these fatally dangerous weapons out of criminal hands.

Increased gun regulation won’t immediately fix everything either, of course—there are other factors in violent crime—but we shouldn’t have an all-or-nothing approach. Obama and Biden’s plan can limit access to deadly assault weapons and large capacity ammunition magazines, close loopholes in background checks and increase their capacity. Funding gun violence research can help us better understand where we need to make changes. These measures can prevent and minimize the impact of gun violence, if legislators will consider realistic, comprehensive solutions, rather than folding to special interests and maintaining the status quo.

And the status quo is pretty grim. When it comes to gun violence, the United States ranks among war-torn and struggling nations. Point blank, Americans own more guns than anyone else in the world at 88 per 100 people, compared to second-place Yemen at 55 per 100 people, the 2007 Small Arms Survey showed. According to the U.N. Office on Drugs and Crime, among developed nations, the United States has the highest percentage of homicides which involve firearms (60 percent) and the highest rate per capita. In the past 10 years, according to the Citizens Crime Commission of New York City, over 140 people have died in mass shootings, all involving large capacity ammunition magazines.

There is something seriously wrong with this. How can we explain having more gun violence than any other developed nation, if not by our unparalleled access to deadly weapons? Are we simply to accept this violence as part of our nation’s fabric, something future Americans will have to expect? Something must change.

I remember first reading about the Columbine shootings in a book. I was seven or eight, and at first I thought it was fiction. Ten years and half a dozen major shootings later, I find that another incidence of this violence no longer seems unreal.

I am sickened by this expectation of America that even I have unconsciously accepted. After 41 days, the media buzz has faded, and it’s that time again, when people start moving on, falling prey to apathy and resignation. But this time, I pray we have the resolve to keep them at bay and say “no more,” for we can no longer sit and wait for the worst.

Hafsa Razi is the cover story editor of the HiLite. The views in this column do not necessarily reflect the views of the HiLite staff. Reach her at [email protected].