Every time an editorial puts the focus on mass shootings and gun violence, we pray it is the last time we do so. We could make it so: We could dismiss the episodes of gun violence that wrack this country’s soul. We could look past the endless legislations for better gun laws that fail. We could stop spending our time trying to find the words that will encourage action to make changes that better protect Americans.

But we will not.

Over the course of eight days in March, 18 people died because of the wrong guns in the wrong hands. The ten lives in Boulder, Colorado, and the eight lives in Atlanta, Georgia, are lives that might have been saved if Congress had not chronically ignored the desires of the public for firearms laws that work. They died because of easy access to weapons, and because loopholes exist that continue to put guns into the hands people who are not responsible, who have mental illness or wicked intent.

These recent 18 deaths are the ones that have come to national attention. What has barely made news are the 9,631 other gun violence deaths in America, according to gunviolencearchive.org in Washington, DC, that have been reported since the beginning of this year. More than half of them were suicides, victims of the availability of a gun in moments of crisis. Over 4,000 were homicides, murders, or unintentional deaths by gun violence.

Not even half of this year has passed, and in a year when Americans remained hunkered down and have only recently begun cautiously returning to social situations, the numbers are horrifying. We are on our way to surpassing the total number of gun violence deaths (willful, malicious, accidental) of the previous year — 19,379.

The House of Representatives in March passed two gun violence-related laws. One is the expansion and strengthening of background checks for those who want to purchase guns, and the second would give the FBI an extended period to check purchasers via the national instant check system. Both are laws that have the support of the public, whom elected officials supposedly represent. Yet, opposition in the Senate looks to again prevent these common sense bills from passing.

Connecticut State Attorney William Tong has joined with other attorneys general asking the US Attorney General to close the loophole in the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF) interpretation of the federal Gun Control Act “that allows criminals, domestic abusers, and other prohibited purchasers of firearms to evade common sense gun laws,” according to a release from the office of the Attorney General, for what are known as “ghost guns.” The current interpretation, they pose, allows “80 percent receiver kits to be sold online and at gun shows throughout the country without background checks. They are also not required to use serial numbers, making them untraceable by law enforcement after being assembled.”

What sense does any of it make? When the “rights” of those who destroy not only the lives of those they kill, but the thousands of other lives of the injured and bereft affected by that gun violence are greater than the rights of all to live with a sense of safety, there is something askew. No one should have to wonder if a visit to a local business or supermarket, to church, school, or the movies could be deadly.

Responsible gun owners know that there is nothing to fear from a background check. They are the ones who take firearms safety courses and demand that those they love who handle guns do so, as well. They are the ones who do not need weapons for “fun.” The bills presented over and again at the federal level do not adversely affect these gun owners.

Every person who has died from gun violence was a person who loved and was loved.

Let this be the final editorial because of mass shootings that continually remind us that this kind of violence can happen in any town in America, at any time, unless lawmakers double down and support the expansion of laws that constituents demand. Newtown knows all too well that this needless violence must stop.