To the Editor:

We are once again faced with a horrifying mass shooting of innocent children, this time at a grade school in Texas. This is predictable and will continue unless we take effective action. We now average about two mass shootings per day in the U.S.

When Australia suffered a mass shooting by a man with an assault weapon in 1996, in which a single person killed 35 people, they banned assault weapons nationwide. There hasn’t been another mass shooting since. Denying potential shooters this weapon of war designed for the battlefield, makes mass shootings much less likely, if not impossible.

We need to exercise the political will to keep these battlefield weapons of mass destruction out of civilian hands. We can make it happen. If necessary, it can be done by the U.S. Senate making an exception (which takes only 50 votes) to the Senate filibuster that makes 60 votes necessary to passage of new laws.

It is time to move beyond thoughts and prayers. We must unite to pass an assault weapons ban into law in the U.S. Then there would be a real reduction in mass shootings. Visit peacecoalition.org for further information and to get involved.

The Rev. Robert Moore
Witherspoon Street

The writer is executive director of the Princeton-based Coalition for Peace Action and oversees its Ceasefire NJ gun violence prevention project.