Telemachus Orfanos was one of the dozen people killed Wednesday night at Borderline Bar & Grill in California at the hands of another mass shooter (who owned the gun legally).

Orfanos was an Eagle Scout and enlisted in the Navy. He was also a survivor of another mass shooting: The one in Las Vegas last summer during the Route 91 Harvest music festival.

When his mother Susan Orfanos was interviewed by local media, her message was 20 seconds of the most heartbreaking plea you’ll ever hear. All she wants is common sense gun safety reform instead of meaningless religious platitudes.

“I hope to God no one sends me anymore prayers. I want gun control. No more guns!” – mother of shooting victim Telemachus Orfanos. She says he survived the #LasVegasShooting but did not survive the #ThousandOaksMassacre. @ABC7 @ABCNewsLive pic.twitter.com/UMqTY1RATK — Veronica Miracle (@ABC7Veronica) November 8, 2018

My son was in Las Vegas with a lot of his friends and he came home. He didn’t come home last night. And I don’t want prayers. I don’t want thoughts. I want gun control, and I hope to God nobody else sends me any more prayers. I want gun control. No more guns.

Prayers have never helped stop a mass shooting. Thoughts do nothing either. Every other nation in the world understands this. But we live in a country where guns and God are sacrosanct to people who pride themselves on their inability to accept reason. They thrive on ignorance and they elect people who promise to ignore evidence and reason. They don’t give a damn about mothers and fathers who lose their kids — that’s never as important as making sure weapons with the potential to kill many people in a short amount of time are legal and accessible. And then they have the audacity to call themselves “pro-life.”

Nothing will change until Americans start electing politicians who follow up their “thoughts and prayers” with action that limits who can have a weapon and what kind they can have.

By the way, Orfanos stayed on message when contacted by another media outlet:

“I have two words: gun control,” Susan Orfanos told BuzzFeed News when reached by phone Thursday afternoon. “Now, now, now, now. No more NRA. No more money. Gun control now.”

It’s too bad conservatives love weapons more than they mourn the deaths of every single person who’s been slaughtered for no reason. They won’t change. Their entire theology requires stubbornness in the face of reason.

We just need to outnumber them and vote like it.

