On February 14, 2018, a 19-year-old armed with an AR-15 walked into a high school protected by an armed guard and killed 17 children, injured many others and terrorized a country. The shooting at Florida’s Parkland High School is just one in a string of incidents of gun violence in our schools, in our churches, in out entertainment venues. Mass shootings, shootings, and gun related suicide have become a new a new and horrifying norm in our country.

You ran as a gunsense candidate, but between 2015-2016 alone, you received $79,908 from the NRA, and you are well on your way to earning back your A rating. Over the years, you have received almost $1 million from the NRA. How much is a child’s life worth? When will you stop cashing in?

The US has nearly six times the gun homicide rate of Canada, more than seven times that of Sweden, and nearly 16 times that of Germany, according to United Nations data compiled by the Guardian. Americans make up less than 5 percent of the world’s population yet own roughly 42 percent of all the world’s privately held firearms.

Enough is enough. We demand more than your thoughts and prayers. We demand real action on real gun control measures that will make a real difference. While comprehensive background checks are a good start, it is not enough. We need to do much more, including reinstating a ban on semi-automatic weapons.

While it is true that semi-automatic weapons are used in only a fraction of incidents of gun violence, they have been used in most mass shootings because they are capable of killing so many more people than other types of guns. And the use of semi-automatic weapons in those incidents has greatly increased the number of deaths and injuries during those mass shootings. The ban was never intended to be a fix of all gun-related deaths - it was meant to be a piece of the puzzle by reducing the carnage of mass shootings. And it worked. Gun massacres fell significantly during the ban and skyrocketed after Congress let the ban expire in 2004. Failing to reinstate the ban is nothing less than malice against not only our children, but all Americans who want to go to a movie or to a concert in peace.

The NRA and GOP answer to the majority of Americans' support of such a ban is to allow more guns in more places and arm our teachers. This is stunningly ignorant and dangerous. The shooter in Las Vegas fire more than 1,100 rounds in ten minutes, injuring over 821 people and killing 58. IN TEN MINUTES. This, despite the fact that the concert was not a gun-free zone and the crowd was filled with people carrying guns. Similarly, the Fort Hood shooter walked onto one of our armed forces bases filled with highly trained and armed soldiers and killed 13 people. None of the good guys with a gun could stop the bad guy. And trying to would only have caused more chaos and death.

The same is true of trying to arm our teachers. Putting aside the fact that proposing to spend over $1 billion arming teachers when our state governments cannot even afford to pay them properly or buy them supplies is shockingly irresponsible, it is madness to ask our teachers to be law enforcement officers in the classroom. Our highly trained law enforcement officers cannot even decide when it is proper to shoot someone - how can we possibly ask our teachers to make these decisions?

While more guns would certainly benefit the NRA and gun manufacturers and, eventually, you and your GOP colleagues with increased donations to your campaigns, they will do nothing else but made us less safe. Instead, it is time for you to worry less about earning an F from the NRA and more about earning an A from the people of Pennsylvania. We urge you to support and vote for the gun control measures already pending and to lead the way in doing even more to prevent gun deaths and violence.

Stand by your constituents and campaign promises by joining Sen. Casey in cosigning onto Sen. Feinstein’s Assault Weapons Ban (S. 2095), cosigning onto Sen Feinstein’s Automatic Gun Fire Prevention Act (S. 1916), and cosigning on Senator Murphy’s Background Check Expansion Act (S. 2009). It's a start.