Committing ourselves to action on this somber anniversary

It's been four years since the shooting at Oregon's Umpqua Community College, the deadliest mass shooting in Oregon in over a hundred years. A professor and eight students were killed, including my cousin.

It's been two years since the horrors at a Las Vegas music festival, the deadliest mass shooting by a sole assailant in American history.

Before, between, and after? Mass shooting after mass shooting, deaths upon deaths. This year, there has been more than one mass shooting per day, in which at least four people are struck by bullets.

Those who have lost their lives and their families are always in our thoughts. That is the easy part; mourning has become second nature to all of us.

What should be easy but has not been? Stopping the violence.

We must ensure universal background checks for all gun sales. We must crack down on straw purchasers who sell guns to folks who can't pass a background check. We must eliminate magazines of over ten bullets — there's no non-military purpose to a magazine that holds 50 bullets except to spray bullets into a crowd.

But you knew that, too.

We must step forward, take action, and say to the NRA and their allies in Congress — enough is enough.

Never give up. I'm here with you in this fight.

Jeff