We HAVE to change, and right now

President Obama speaking in Newtown: "We’re not doing enough. And we will have to change.”

Sen. Dianne Feinstein is showing us how to start. On the first day of the new Congress, she will propose reinstating the assaults weapons ban and prohibiting high-capacity clips.

Today Rep. Raul Grijalva wrote that "grief cannot be the end of our response. With millions of other Americans, I say today that we should stop making emotional room in our hearts for each year’s new round of public shootings and killing sprees. We should resolve to end them rather than accommodate them.

“At some point, which I believe we long ago passed, the time comes to stop calling for ‘a national dialogue’ when one side is clearly uninterested in talking. Absolutism in defense of gun violence is no virtue, and we have been cowed by absolutists for too long. When we accept eight or nine thousand gun murders a year as the price of what some people think of as freedom, we have gone too far.

“It takes necessary courage in these moments to admit that our laws are part of the problem and that no amount of emotional healing is going to prevent the next tragedy. The scandalous availability of highly lethal weapons to even the least qualified, least competent and most dangerous among us has gone on long enough. If pro-gun activists will not negotiate in good faith, it is time for the country to move on without them. Sitting on our hands and hoping for the best is no longer an option.

“There are plenty of people who believe otherwise. I wonder how they would feel if it had been them at five years old.”

Amen. Amen!

In the President's words, we "have to change." No more waiting. No more postponing. This will take a much wider solidarity than what has existed until now. But together we surely can do it.