And off he went, just as President Obama was tearfully addressing the nation, and perhaps hinting that he agreed.  

“We’ve endured too many of these tragedies in the past few years,” Obama said at an afternoon press conference. “We’re going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.” 

No matter how inspired he is to do so, no matter how riled up your friends are on Facebook and Twitter, that “meaningful action” will be hard-won. If there’s any lesson from the past 15 years’ alarming spate of mass shootings, it’s that they don’t tend to inspire much more than rhetoric, from both sides of the debate about gun control. 

“People who are against guns say if people didn’t have guns, this wouldn’t have happened, therefore we can’t let anybody have guns,” says Edward Leddy, a professor of criminology and sociology at Florida’s Saint Leo College. “The other side is going to say if criminals are the only ones who have guns, criminals become essentially a protected class.” 

Now Sandy Hook will never be the same. The quiet, picturesque New England town had been preparing for Christmas—with a massive illuminated pine tree erected in the center of town—when the second-most fatal school shooting in American history broke out.

According to police reports, Lanza, 20, died of a self-inflicted gunshot wound inside the school. Among the victims was his mother, Nancy Lanza, a teacher there, and principal Dawn Hochsprung. The 20 children were between the ages of 5 and 10. According to CNN, three guns found at the scene were legally purchased by Nancy Lanza.

Sandy Hook’s residents are reeling. Pastor Robert Weiss of St. Rose of Lima Catholic Church says at least seven or eight of the children in his parish had been in the school when the gunman entered. “I baptized some of these children,” he said, breaking down in tears. “Some were getting ready for their First Communion this year.”

On Friday afternoon, the intersection leading up to the elementary school was a chaotic scene, with the road blocked by police and emergency vehicles. Dozens of reporters and TV cameras and crews clogged the area. A large NBC truck, apparently stuck, cut off traffic in both directions.

A mother of a 10-year-old boy at Sandy Hook Elementary School told CBS News that the “school should be very proud” of the teachers who kept her son safe. “I get to put my kids to bed at night, and I’m very lucky,” she said, while tearfully acknowledging that “there’s a lot of parents tonight that have not gotten that miracle.” 

Teacher: “I Thought We Were All Going To Die”

But Lanza, whose profile picture was shared thousands of times online, posted vehement denials on his Facebook page, such as: “Everyone shut the fuck up, it wasn’t me.”

And it wasn’t. The news outlets later corrected their stories, saying police had identified the shooter as Adam Lanza, 20, who is Ryan Lanza’s brother.

This was an egregious error, a product of a fast-moving media culture in which getting it first often supersedes getting it right. Accusing the wrong man of perpetrating a massacre in which 27 people, including 20 children, were killed is about as bad as it gets. And in the Twitter age, that misinformation spread around the globe as ordinary folks amplified the mistaken media accounts.

Blogger Jeff Jarvis, who teaches journalism at the City University of New York, followed the trail on Twitter and did not name Ryan Lanza in his post. But Jarvis wrote later that he “foolishly did not include a conditional statement in my tweet: I did not say ‘if this is the account of the killer, then…’ Or I did not say this was the ‘alleged’ or ‘reputed’ account of the person named as the killer. These are basic, basic journalistic skills drilled until they are reflexes and I would use them in any story for print. I didn’t use them online.”

The collective thought: Who would do such a thing?

Lanza was 20. His mother, Nancy, may have been a teacher at Sandy Hook Elementary, and police say she was found dead in her Newtown home. According to sources, Lanza “had a dispute with her” before targeting her kindergarten classroom during his shooting rampage. Police say he opened fire on two rooms. In addition to his mother, the school’s principal and psychologist were shot dead. He used two handguns and a .223-caliber assault rifle.

When his dead body was found in the school, he was dressed in all black and wearing body armor.

One parent who was in the school during the attack said “100 rounds” must have been fired. There was a “pop pop pop” sound in the hallway, said Meredith Artley. Three people went to investigate, but “only one person came back.”

We have been through this again and again. Columbine. Virginia Tech. Tucson. Aurora. Is Jarvis right? Is it finally time to have an honest debate about the subject our politicians seem determined to avoid?

I understand the reluctance to dive into a divisive debate even before the bodies are counted. I understand the passionate feelings on both sides of the issue.

But how many more shootings of this magnitude will it take?

Every time there is a tragedy involving guns, all the ideologues come out with their predictable positions. Gun enthusiasts claim that opponents want to get rid of the Second Amendment and that it doesn’t take such weapons to kill people. Gun control supporters say there would be less senseless violence in America if it weren’t so easy to walk into a store and buy a gun and—in most states—endless rounds of ammunition.

And on the other side, politicians who know better, including most Democrats, cower before the threat of electoral retaliation—and invoke the rationalization that it is too hard to pass anything in Congress, even a ban on assault weapons or closing the gun-show loophole that lets criminals and the deranged shop for firearms without any background check. White House Press Secretary Jay Carney said today is “not the time” to talk about policies that at least in theory President Obama supports. Oh yes it is. If not now, when? If not the president, who? As he spoke in stricken terms, he seemed to comprehend that—and that he holds the office Franklin Roosevelt described as “pre-eminently a place of moral leadership.”

No measure short of banning all firearms could prevent all shootings. But we can take practical measures that would save many lives. Who among us, who among our children, could be the next to be killed in an unexpected moment of unspeakable horror? So now we will shed a tear again. And in the phrase of Robert Kennedy, who himself would soon be a casualty instead of a president, we should “say a prayer for ourselves and for our country.” And we should have the courage to do something for our country, too. We should look into the anguished faces of parents outside that Connecticut elementary school—faces now tragically incised on our national consciousness. We should recall events from that darkness at noon in Dallas nearly 60 years ago to the carnage at Columbine and Aurora. Those faces and events matter more than the scorecard of the National Rampage Association.

Let us resolve that half a century and more of this country as a killing field is more than enough. Let us refuse to let this day of dying fade into memory and the malaise of resignation to things as they are. Let us stand against the odds so that countless others who otherwise would never even know the cause of their slaying or the name of their executioner may instead live, laugh, and find love and not hate.

Today Barack Obama spoke his heart and the nation’s—and called on us to take “meaningful action regardless of the politics.” Maybe at last, this is the time; it must be the time. The massacre has come too many times.

So our hearts are broken today—for the parents and grandparents, sisters and brothers of these little children, and for the families of the adults who were lost.  Our hearts are broken for the parents of the survivors as well, for as blessed as they are to have their children home tonight, they know that their children’s innocence has been torn away from them too early, and there are no words that will ease their pain. 

As a country, we have been through this too many times. Whether it’s an elementary school in Newtown, or a shopping mall in Oregon, or a temple in Wisconsin, or a movie theater in Aurora, or a street corner in Chicago—these neighborhoods are our neighborhoods, and these children are our children.  And we're going to have to come together and take meaningful action to prevent more tragedies like this, regardless of the politics.

This evening, Michelle and I will do what I know every parent in America will do, which is hug our children a little tighter and we’ll tell them that we love them, and we’ll remind each other how deeply we love one another. But there are families in Connecticut who cannot do that tonight. And they need all of us right now. In the hard days to come, that community needs us to be at our best as Americans. And I will do everything in my power as President to help.

Because while nothing can fill the space of a lost child or loved one, all of us can extend a hand to those in need—to remind them that we are there for them, that we are praying for them, that the love they felt for those they lost endures not just in their memories but also in ours.