The scars of the San Bernardino shooting, which claimed 14 innocent lives, are four years old tomorrow. The scars at Saugus High School in Santa Clarita, where two students were murdered and three more were wounded, are not even three weeks old right now. And the scars from a mass shooting at a backyard party in Fresno that killed four are three days fresher than that.

The gaping holes in our society that allowed San Bernardino to happen are as wide today as they were four years ago. But you don’t need to hear that from me – you can see it for yourselves.

Before I served the Inland Empire in Congress, I was a 9-1-1 dispatcher with the Los Angeles Police Department for 17 years. I’ve been on the other end of the line from gun violence. I’ve heard the earsplitting crack of a firearm going off, and experienced the horrific moment when a desperate voice on the other end screams in pain and then goes silent. I know exactly what the price is for Congressional inaction on gun violence, and I’m disgusted to see innocent people continue to pay for it with their lives.

Right now, if you try to buy a gun, they will run your name through the National Instant Crime Search (NICS) database. Ninety percent of inquiries come back in two minutes. For the other ten percent, the government has three days to determine eligibility, or else the sale can proceed with no questions asked.

That’s right – the individuals who raise the most red flags are likely to get through with the least oversight, because the clock will just run out.

This is known as the Charleston loophole, because it’s exactly how Dylan Roof acquired his guns despite prior drug convictions before he murdered nine people in cold blood at the Emanuel AME church.

NICS is also underfunded, and the information reported is inconsistent from state to state. Only 12 of the 50 states properly report whether or not someone charged with a felony is actually convicted – yet the conviction is what determines if someone is allowed to buy a gun.

These inconsistencies are lethal. Devin Patrick Kelley murdered 26 people at the Sutherland Springs Church in 2017 with a gun he was prohibited from purchasing. A domestic violence conviction while he was in the Air Force should have prevented the sale, but that conviction never made it into the NICS system.

Things get even murkier for non-commercial sales. Anyone selling a firearm to a friend or family member isn’t required to get a background check. Anyone selling firearms at a gun show can simply say they’re selling their personal collection to avoid background checks, too. And anyone willing to buy spare parts online can build a “ghost gun” at home that can’t be traced or registered.

So the problem that we face isn’t that there are disturbed people in this country – there are troubled people all over the world. It’s not that we’re exposed to violence in the media – the same video games and movies flash across screens on every continent on Earth.

The problem we have is access.

We can’t legislate troubled thoughts out of someone’s head, but we can pass laws that prevent a gun from winding up in that person’s hands.

The Bipartisan Background Checks Act of 2019 and the Enhanced Background Checks Act of 2019 both passed the House of Representatives, and are currently collecting dust in the Senate. If they were passed and signed into law, they would immediately address the background check issues I outlined here.

I’m a co-sponsor of the Ghost Guns are Guns Act, which – if passed – would require assembly kits to be considered firearms so we can start tracking them and ensure they don’t fall into dangerous hands.

And I am the author of the Multiple Firearm Sales Reporting Modernization Act. It would require gun dealers to file a report anytime a customer buys more than one rifle within five days. This is a commonsense step that would help law enforcement crack down on gun trafficking. We already require it for handguns, so why wouldn’t we require it for assault-style weapons, too?

Two of my constituents died four years ago in San Bernardino. At a bare minimum, we owe it to them to pass the common-sense laws that would prevent the same events from playing out, over and over. It sickens me to think that so much time has passed, and so little change has occurred.

Norma Torres represents the 35th congressional district.