Since no amount of dead bodies seems enough to spur lawmakers to rein in access to guns, let’s focus on the living — the children gun violence leaves behind.

Start with the little boy and girl belonging to Jennifer Markovsky, a 35-year-old mother who was one of three people murdered last Friday during the latest mass shooting of 2015 — this time, a lone gunman’s hourslong siege of a Planned Parenthood clinic in Colorado Springs. For the crime of accompanying her friend to an appointment at the clinic, Ms. Markovsky lost her life in the most brutal and pointless, yet entirely American, manner.

Here’s a thought for lawmakers who refuse to consider any meaningful legislation to reduce the daily carnage of gun violence across America: Thanks to your single-minded defense of unfettered gun rights at the expense of all reason and respect for life, there is an endless supply of children to be consoled. The other two victims of Friday’s assault — Garrett Swasey, a police officer, and Ke’Arre Stewart, an Iraq war veteran — also each had two children.

Of course, children aren’t the only ones who endure this unnecessary suffering. So do parents and grandparents. Grandchildren and nieces and nephews. Husbands and wives and brothers and aunts. Lifelong friends and beloved colleagues. Every life unique and irreplaceable, yet all equally defenseless in the face of a bullet.