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In the past two weeks, two 18-year-old men armed with AR-15-style rifles carried out mass slaughters. The first, a racist attack in a Buffalo, N.Y., supermarket, left 10 dead. The second, an assault on an elementary school in Uvalde, Texas, killed 19 students and two teachers.

The carnage continues. The victims of mass shootings in the past decade have included Latino, Black, White, Asian and gay people; Jews and Baptists; transit workers, festival celebrants, worshippers, grocery shoppers, teachers and students. There will be more. And the problem is getting worse.

We have become a gun-crazed nation. The United States has more than twice as many guns per capita as Yemen and more than three times as many as every other country in the world. We have more guns than people. Annual firearm manufacturing has nearly tripled here since 2000. Semiautomatic handgun sales have surpassed rifles since 2009.

In 2020, a record 45,222 people died from gun-related injuries in the U.S., a 14% increase from the year before, a 25% increase from five years earlier and a 43% increase from a decade prior. Fifty-four percent of those 2020 gun deaths were suicides; 43% were murders.

The rate of gun deaths of children 14 and younger rose by about 50% from the end of 2019 to the end of 2020. An FBI report this week shows that active-shooting incidents, attempts to kill people in populated areas, increased 52% in 2021 from the year before and 97% from 2017.

Here in California, our lawmakers continue to pass tough gun laws. Consequently, we have among the lowest per-capita firearm death rates in the nation.

But we can’t seal our borders. And much of the nation is frozen by inaction. In Washington, the elected officials feeding at the financial trough of the NRA continue sacrificing the public’s interest for their personal political ambitions.

If we can’t break the grip of the gun lobby, there is little hope for change.

The Uvalde massacre was the worst school shooting since 20 children and six educators were killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., in 2012. Many thought back then that Congress would act. They were wrong.

The mostly Republican gun-rights cabal in Congress continues to block renewal of the national assault-weapons ban that expired in 2004, even though data shows mass-shooting-related homicides were reduced when the ban was in effect.

And they can’t even support low-hanging legislation such as universal background checks — which often are not required for purchases from private parties, commonly at gun shows or online — or red-flag laws that allow police or family members to seek temporary court orders for removal of firearms from those who might harm themselves or others.

Nothing seems to move Republicans in Congress. Not the 58 people killed on the Las Vegas strip in 2017; 49 in an Orlando nightclub in 2016; 26 at a Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in 2017; 20 at an El Paso, Texas, Walmart in 2019; 14 at a San Bernardino center helping the developmentally disabled in 2015; 12 at a Thousand Oaks nightclub in 2018; 12 at a Virginia Beach, Va., municipal building in 2019; 11 at a Pittsburgh, Penn., synagogue in 2018; nine transit workers in San Jose in 2021; eight at Atlanta-area spas; nor the three at the Gilroy Garlic Festival in 2019.

The list grows, the deaths mount, and the weaponry proliferates as gun-rights advocates recycle their diversionary bromides.

It was only hours after the Uvalde children were killed in their classroom that U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz, R-Texas, the biggest congressional beneficiary of gun-lobby money, called for keeping armed law enforcement on campus and Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton called for training and arming teachers.

No, the answer is not conscripting our classroom teachers to become on-campus militia. And guards with sidearms or semiautomatic weaponry at every school will not stop the attacks and begs the question of whether we should do the same at every house of worship, grocery store and nightclub.

If the best Republicans have to offer is turning school campuses into armed fortresses, the carnage will continue.

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