Houston Police Chief Art Acevedo has a well-documented commitment to serving and protecting the general public, rather than special-interest groups like the National Rifle Association. And he isn’t easily intimidated by bullies like their spokeswoman, Dana Loesch.

That’s probably why he took a moment, last Friday, to deliver a message, via his Facebook page, about that day’s mass shooting at Santa Fe High School.

“Today I spent the day dealing with another mass shooting of children and a responding police officer who is clinging to life,” wrote Acevedo in his post, which was shared more than 20,000 times.

“I know some have strong feelings about gun rights but I want you to know I’ve hit rock bottom and I am not interested in your views as it pertains to this issue,” he continued.

Read more: Chief Art Acevedo battles NRA in heated exchanges after Santa Fe massacre

His perspective is a well-informed one, and it doesn’t hurt for community leaders like the police chief to give voice to the sorrow and frustration many Texans were feeling after the day’s events.

“Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn,” wrote Paul, in his epistle to the Romans, about 2,000 years ago.

That’s good advice, even now. And on a day like May 18, obviously, first responders like Acevedo have no shortage of important things to do.

But since he made time to sharing his thoughts, I was interested in hearing them. And I shared his post with my Facebook friends too, because his message was important.

“This isn’t a time for prayers, and study and inaction, it’s a time for prayers, action and the asking of God’s forgiveness for our inaction (especially the elected officials that ran to the cameras today, acted in a solemn manner, called for prayers, and will once again do absolutely nothing),” Acevedo wrote.

Read more: Santa Fe shooting reminds us to say our prayers — and then get to work

There was nothing controversial about this conclusion. It was essentially the same opinion I expressed in the column I had filed Friday evening, after visiting Santa Fe. For that matter, Gov. Greg Abbott had offered similar sentiments during his own visit to the town.

“We need to do more than just pray for the victims and their families,” Abbott said at a press conference, calling for a three-day roundtable discussion that started Tuesday.

But Abbott is, of course, one of the elected officials Acevedo was calling out in his post.

Read more: A generation of students has lived with school shootings

Acevedo has the right to express his opinion; there’s no question about that. His point, in this case, was that prayers don’t stop bullets, and aren’t a substitute for any of the other actions we might have taken since the Columbine massacre in 1999.

A reasonable person would be hard-pressed to disagree with him about that — or to take offense at his tone, particularly under the circumstances. Acevedo is, after all, the Houston police chief. It had been a long day. He had also attended a memorial honoring HPD officers who had been killed in the line of duty.

Yet Acevedo’s post nonetheless drew fire from the NRA’s Loesch. And he had, apparently, anticipated that risk.

“Here we go,” he tweeted on Monday, after Loesch’s opening salvo against him, on NRATV.

Acevedo is perfectly capable of defending himself from belligerent right-wing extremists. We know that already, because some of them have berated him for his perspective on, for example, the “sanctuary cities” ban the state passed last year.

The elected officials he was criticizing in this case, like Abbott, haven’t been foolish enough to second any of Loesch’s inane personal attacks, which have continued over the course of the week and metastasized as a result of the chief’s decision to publicly object to her baseless claims about his motives and character.

Read more: Can we have a serious conversation after Sutherland Springs

But Texas’s elected officials may not realize how revealing their silence is, given the context. As the chief of police in America’s fourth-largest city, Acevedo is one of the stakeholders the governor should want to hear from — and he’s happy to give his thoughts on the subject, clearly.

Since then, Loesch and the NRA have effectively taken the stance that someone like Acevedo should have no role in such debates, and that the opinions he expressed in his Facebook post are in and of themselves an assault on our Second Amendment rights.

They aren’t, of course. Acevedo was just calling for the kind of action that should have been taken long ago, and predicting that the elected officials who had called for action that afternoon would ultimately do nothing, because those who call for change, like him, risk incurring the displeasure of bullies like Loesch.

erica.grieder

twitter.com/ericagrieder