This is the week that I usually share a column I wrote when my children graduated high school. I still can’t believe that it’s been more than 17 years.

In that column I reflected on the sons and daughters who finished up their high school years like many of their classmates, never having been the star athlete, class officer or valedictorian, but who accomplished so much by just being themselves. Who made their parents proud by simply working their tails off in school. Maybe they squeezed in a job or helped around the house. Free time was rare, the juggling at times tedious, but they managed to pull it off.

I’d offer up some simple advice as they move to the next chapter in life: Make sure you say please and thank you. First thing people look at are your shoes. No one likes a sore loser. Wear clean underwear. Share. Listen. It’s OK to laugh. Don’t be stubborn. Ask for directions. Treat people the way you want to be treated. Enjoy what you do.

Nothing wrong with any of that. Sometimes we forget about the basics.

But as I thought more about those graduation days, I couldn’t shake the images I’ve seen on an almost inconceivable routine basis of shocked students, hands on their heads as they walked away from their schools, stunned parents running towards them in search of their children and law-enforcement swarming all around the crime scene after another deadly school shooting in the United States.

One of the latest such scenes was just a few weeks back, when an 18-year-old and his 36-year-old stepfather were killed in a mass shooting following a high school graduation ceremony at a theater in Richmond, Virginia. Five others were wounded. 

The kids had just received their diplomas. They were still in caps and gowns. How’s that for a high school graduation memory?

The United States has grown accustomed to mass shootings in public places such as shopping centers, churches and schools. 

When a gunman killed 20 first graders and six adults with an assault rifle at Sandy Hook Elementary School in 2012, it rattled Newtown, Connecticut and reverberated across the world.

After that horrific incident, so many of us believed that if the nation’s deadliest school shooting couldn’t provoke change to combat gun violence by extending background checks, tightening restrictions on buying gun silencers, and yes, eliminating the sale of assault rifles, then history would be doomed to repeat itself. And it has.

In data from the Gun Violence Archive, a nonprofit that began tracking schools about a year after Sandy Hook, it found that since then, there have been at least 240 school shootings nationwide. In those episodes 450 people were shot and 148 were killed.

Even more inconceivable is that year after year, shooting after shooting lawmakers simply offer thoughts and prayers to the families of the victims but absolutely nothing in any way to prevent the next tragedy.

We have neither safety nor freedom because of the hand-wringing. We suffer through vigils and “thoughts and prayers” and we still have 279 mass shootings only 157 days into the year. We need fewer guns on the streets. We need to do better by our children and grandchildren. They deserve a country that is both safe and free. They deserve parents who have not silently surrendered.

We must elect leaders who will fight for reform, advocate for those in office who already do, and demonstrate our support loudly and often. We need to do better by our children.

In the fall my granddaughter Catherine goes into first grade. I’ve always hoped to still be around to see her graduate. I never thought I’d have to pray that she’ll be around. 

Barry Lewis is a longtime journalist and author who lives with his wife Bonnie in the Town of Neversink. He can be reached at      barrylewisscdemocrat@gmail.com.