After the horrific shooting in Las Vegas, the impulse of politicians is to lower flags, offer moments of silence, and lead somber tributes. But what we need most of all isn’t mourning, but action to lower the toll of guns in America.

We needn’t simply acquiesce in this kind of slaughter. When Australia suffered a mass shooting in 1996, the country united behind tougher laws on firearms. The result is that the gun homicide rate was almost halved, and the gun suicide rate dropped by half, according to The Journal of Public Health Policy. America’s gun homicide rate is now about 20 times Australia’s.

Skeptics will say that there are no magic wands, and they’re right. But it is unconscionable for politicians to continue to empower killers at this scale.

Since 1970, more Americans have died from guns (including suicides, murders and accidents) than the sum total of all the Americans who died in all the wars in American history, back to the American Revolution. Every day, some 92 Americans die from guns, and American kids are 14 times as likely to die from guns as children in other developed countries, according to David Hemenway of Harvard.