Two dead — no three. Seven injured. Wait, nine injured.

When the breaking news reports first come in, you get nothing but numbers. The thing is though, they aren’t numbers; they’re people.

I didn’t know them, but to someone else, they were everything. They were someone’s world. They made someone else laugh or maybe cry. They probably argued with their loved ones and made mistakes just like you and me. Maybe they were capable of changing the world — at least someone’s world.

How many people have to lose their entire worlds — their brothers, sisters, mothers, fathers, sons and daughters — before we say, “Enough is enough. I will not stand for this senseless, horrific, inexcusable violence. I will not accept this America.”

This can’t be the America we leave for future generations.

I don’t have an answer, no solution to this problem. No one person will have the answer. But we can no longer afford to do nothing. We cannot afford to become desensitized to this violence.

We have to force constructive conversations. We have to be angry. We have to dream of a better America. We have to demand a better America.

We have to make a better America.

There is no more time for the same, old partisan debate. There is no more time for arguing in circles, doing the same, old back and forth.

It’s time for viable solutions. It’s time for something new. It’s time to prevent the loss of innocent lives of the people who just want to go to a movie, or to church or to school. It’s time to say, “Never again,” and mean it.

What if it were your mother, sister, father or brother?

What if it were your children?