The right to feel safe in your own home, to walk down your local street after dark, and to send your children to school without a knot of anxiety in your stomach is a foundational expectation of civil society. Yet, our national conversation around public safety and gun violence remains trapped in a loop of predictable, absolutist rhetoric. We look at the same tragic headlines and fall back into our partisan corners, while our communities continue to pay the price in human lives.

As a lifelong NRA member, I am not always lockstep, but I am a fierce defender of the Second Amendment. But defending a constitutional right does not require us to tolerate a status quo where the administrative systems meant to protect us are functionally broken.