San Antonio Express News Op-ed: Thoughts and prayers are not enough

How moving to see hundreds of neighbors and key community leaders at Main Plaza Sunday evening, sharing sorrow and expressing sympathies to the many suffering from tragedy.

We can barely comprehend the unbearable grief of the families of those who will never come home from their shopping trip or night out. We mourn those whose lives have been cruelly taken. But it cannot end there.

First, we must join with political adversaries and the faith community to affirm that violence is never the way to resolve disputes. Americans may hold different political views, but they are not traitors — the epithet that President Trump has too often used. Let's do all that we can to reduce the danger of copycat extremists.

Second, all of our elected officials should do far more than merely offering "thoughts and prayers." We need weeks and weeks of action, not just moments of silence. Mass gun violence is an epidemic, enabled by all those steadfastly refusing to approve gun safety measures.

Whether it is Sutherland Springs, Santa Fe, El Paso, Dayton or any other community torn apart, America is distinguished from other advanced countries not by a greater proportion of our citizenry who are violent, but by easy access for the violent to weapons of war, whose only purpose is to kill other human beings. Such weapons should be banned, as they once were. Too many officials stand opposed to doing anything meaningful about the 32 mass killings by firearm that have already occurred this year. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell and his cohorts refuse to permit the Senate to vote on even the modest, House-approved universal background check bill. And, of course, the House could and should do more.

Finally, we must continue to speak out against domestic terrorism, violence and acts of hate, as well as the corrosive and un-American rot of white nationalism.

Using language quite similar to Trump, the El Paso gunman was specifically targeting Hispanics. Hate speech and racist rants, using Stalin's language to declare the press "the enemy of the people," xenophobic, false claims of an immigrant invasion — these have grave consequences, especially when they come from the highest office in the land. We have now witnessed those bloody consequences, inspired by our president's repeated wrongdoing. President Trump has made clear that he is not changing, nor apologizing, nor uniting. Just as he does not care enough to know Dayton from Toledo, he cannot unite because division is his chosen path to stay in power.