Does America have the Courage to Correct its Gun Laws?

 Our nation is in need of courage. Mass shooting after mass shooting. Will we do what needs to be done? Or, do we lack that courage?
   Britain, 1996: A gunman walks into a schoolhouse and kills 17. Britain reacts swiftly, tightening its gun laws. There have been no school mass school shootings and only one mass shooting of any kind since.
   Australia, the same year: A gunman takes out 35. "We have an opportunity in this country not to go down the American path," Prime Minister John Howard's famously says after the massacre. Within two weeks, semi-automatics are banned. Just this June, a man took out 4 and injured one in Australia's second-worst mass shooting since the ban. He was limited to a pump-action shotgun. Had he had a semi-automatic, it could have been much worse.
   And, still fresh in our memory, New Zealand, March of this year: A white supremacist kills 51 and injures 49 in mosques. Quick comes the response. Gun laws slam down, banning many weapons. On this one, it is too early to say if it will reduce the mass shootings.
  And yet, in America, we lack the courage to even utter -- even say -- what needs to be done, much less to do it.
  Courage? It takes this to do what is right. Courage? It takes courage to take action when it is accepted all across the land and drilled into our consciences that the Constitution forbids us from infringing on the right to keep and bear arms.
  Courage? If our laws need changed, do we have the courage to change them? Our Constitution once deprived women and black people of full rights. We changed those laws. We should be no less equal to doing the right thing this time.
   Ask not what the law is; Ask what is right. The law can be changed, but what is right cannot.