Last week we sent our thoughts and prayers to the people of Uvalde, Texas, following a school shooting. The previous week they went out to the people of Buffalo following a mass shooting there. In both cases, innocent people lost their lives because of a heavily-armed lone gunman.

The Gun Violence Archive reports that 214 mass shootings have taken place (as of May 30) in 2022. The U.S. ended 2021 with 693 mass shootings, per the Gun Violence Archive. The year before saw 611. And 2019 had 417.

As for school shootings, NPR reports that 27 of them have taken place in 2022.

There were 34 in all of 2021. In 2020, there were 10 shootings. Both 2019 and 2018 recorded 24 shootings.

That’s a lot of thoughts and prayers. How many more shootings will take place before we figure out that sending thoughts and prayers just isn’t enough?

Weren’t we taught in church school that God helps those who help themselves? Maybe God wants us to find a way to stop killing each other.

The answer is not putting more weapons out there. Common sense should tell us that to compel teachers to carry and learn to shoot may deprive us of some good teachers. Nor is arming more students a viable deterrent. Nor is turning every school into a prison, where armed guards greet you, and where no one enters or leaves without their permission.

The New York Times recently reported that after a British gunman killed 16 people in 1987, the country banned semiautomatic weapons like those he had used. It did the same with most handguns after a 1996 school shooting. It now has one of the lowest gun-related death rates in the developed world.

In Australia, a 1996 massacre prompted mandatory gun buybacks that saw, according to some estimates, as many as one million firearms melted into slag. The rate of mass shootings plummeted from once every 18 months to, so far, only one in the 26 years since.

Canada also tightened gun laws after a 1989 mass shooting. So did Germany in 2002, New Zealand in 2019 and Norway last year.

Why can’t we ban automatic weapons? They’re not needed to hunt deer or scare away the black bear that’s rummaging though your garbage.

Why can’t there be background checks on people who want to buy sophisticated tactical weapons? At least ten people in Buffalo and 19 in Uvalde would still be alive if someone had paid attention to red flags sent out by the two most recent mass shooters.

The answer, of course, lies with the National Rifle Association and all of the campaign contributions it has doled out to politicians unwilling to ruffle their feathers. There’s a lot of blood on many hands.

And one day, someone else’s thoughts and prayers may be coming our way.