A couple days after the Las Vegas massacre my 19-year-old daughter texted me this, “So tired of seeing #thoughtsandprayers trending with an incident like this. Sure thoughts and prayers can be comforting, but they’re only temporary and are only effective when combined with action. Nothing’s changed for 16 months since Pulse. It’s not enough.”

It’s sad that Taylor, pretty new to activism and decades away from burnout, is already a little cynical. I’d like to give her more hope about gun control like I do with other issues taking a direct hit after the election. But I can’t.

It’s no secret the well-funded NRA has convinced members and powerful political allies that gun control is simply an Us vs. Them problem. That is, anyone who supports gun control (which happens to include large numbers of gun owners) is hell bent on taking away their guns.

This is categorically untrue, but the false narrative has some created some serious paranoia.

Eighty to ninety-percent of Americans support background checks for all gun purchases. And yet, the NRA’s fear mongering (”they’re after your guns!”) galvanizes members to swarm their elected officials who then vote against legislation designed to at least try to keep weapons out of the hands of people who shouldn’t have them.

But I’m not about to tell Taylor the National Rifle Association is more powerful than most Americans. She has to believe voters have the power to move the needle on gun control, not that a lobbyist group controls the needle.

After the Las Vegas massacre the NRA did finally agree to back a ban on bump stocks (a device that turns semi-automatic rifles into rapid-fire weapons similar to machine guns), but on the whole, gun control legislation remains a non-stop push pull.

“Nearly 1 in 3 Americans own a gun. But only 5 million belong to the NRA, which is often portrayed as the voice of hunters, skeet shooters and other gun owners,” wrote Michael S. Rosenwald in his 2015 piece for The Washington Post. The squelched majority could emerge as a powerful force in the gun control debate, gun control advocates say, if they ever gain traction — emphasis on if.”

After every gun massacre the NRA is respectfully silent until their spokesperson comes out with the standard mantra, "The only thing that stops a bad guy with a gun is a good guy with a gun."

Absent from the conversation is that until the late 1960’s the NRA worked with the government to limit the traffic of guns, including among ex-convicts and mental patients (“The NRA Wasn’t Always Against Gun Restrictions). “Well into the 20th century, the NRA was known primarily for promoting the safe and proper use of firearms, often in some form of cooperation with the government,” writes Ron Elving.

For a couple days following the Vegas shooting Taylor and I texted back and forth until I told her I needed to get away from the news for a while. After the Pulse tragedy 30 minutes from our home, every time the TV flashed a picture of another victim around the same age as Taylor I almost couldn’t breathe.

My daughter seems to come out from under the gun tragedies faster than I do. Maybe because she isn’t a parent she can look the pain directly in the eyes. She doesn’t see her child at every concert, movie theater or classroom.

I won’t tell Taylor that if I grew up in this era I might think humans are destined to self-destruct. I’ve never once said that to her or to anyone, but after the election and the string of gun massacres I’ve felt a new kind of pessimism and unfamiliar despair.

I want Taylor to know that despite chronic setbacks and another mass shooting that she shouldn’t lose hope, although when it comes to advancing gun control legislation I feel pretty hopeless.

Still, I urge her to sign petitions, contact her legislators and to use her vote to elect politicians who care more about common sense gun control than payola from NRA and gun lobbyists.

And I’ll also tell her even if I don’t believe it myself, that someday the voice of the nation will be stronger than the NRA’s.