Emergency personnel gather at Brown University on Saturday after a shooting in a lecture hall that killed at least two students. Mark Stockwell/AP

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Every school shooting is horrific—a reminder of the worst form of American exceptionalism and one more infuriating occasion to question why so many of our neighbors and citizens accept this perverse violence and choose not to cry out for measures that might counter or diminish the mass murders that plague our land. When Donald Trump responds with the usual tut-tutting—“It’s a shame; just pray”—it’s a sign that doing nothing is just fine. Which is especially aggravating when gun violence devastates your own community.

I am a graduate of Brown University. As an alum, I have organized and held panels there. I know professors, administrators, and recent students. And many times, I have walked past or near the site of the Barus and Holley building where a gunman on Saturday burst into a lecture hall and shot 11 students, killing two of them. I mourn the lives lost, ache for the families of the dead, hope the best for the survivors, and grieve for the community, concerned for how this will impact the university’s students, teachers, and workers, and the people of Providence. We have all become too accustomed to such tragedies. They can seem faraway occurrences; that’s obviously a survival mechanism. It’s different when it’s close.

As my blood boiled in the aftermath of this horror, the usual context kicked in: In this level of gun violence, the United States stands alone among Western democracies. And the math is simple: We have more guns than other nations—500 million total firearms or so, by some estimates—and few restrictions on guns. Thus, more gun deaths. There’s nothing incomprehensible here.

One of the most aggravating elements of the so-called debate over gun violence is the despicable falsehood pushed by Republicans and conservatives: They are coming to confiscate your guns.

Nor are the politics difficult to understand. In the........

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