“And, of course, what’s also routine is that somebody, somewhere will comment and say, Obama politicized this issue. Well, this is something we should politicize. It is relevant to our common life together, to the body politic. I would ask news organizations — because I won’t put these facts forward — have news organizations tally up the number of Americans who’ve been killed through terrorist attacks over the last decade and the number of Americans who’ve been killed by gun violence, and post those side-by-side on your news reports. This won’t be information coming from me; it will be coming from you. We spend over a trillion dollars, and pass countless laws, and devote entire agencies to preventing terrorist attacks on our soil, and rightfully so. And yet, we have a Congress that explicitly blocks us from even collecting data on how we could potentially reduce gun deaths. How can that be?”

–President Obama’s statement on the shootings at Umpqua Community College, Roseburg, Oregon

There have been a number of news organizations who have done this very thing since Thursday. Here is a chart from CNN, for example. The result is staggering. It is time to do something about this.

My heart breaks for the families of those who died in this horrific way. I will be thinking about those who lost their lives and will do the Buddhist equivalent of prayer for both.

But now is the time to do something about this because it will only happen again, sooner than we think. It always happens again.