Lois Capps: “Last Friday night, my home community was rocked by unspeakable violence. It left six students and their assailant dead…”

“Last Friday night, my home community was rocked by unspeakable violence. It left six students and their assailant dead and 13 others injured. Friday's rampage in Isla Vista, California, has touched the community in a powerful way. IV, as it is affectionately called, is a special place where people know their neighbors. Everyone is presumed to be a friend, and bikes are more common than cars. On Friday, IV joined a growing list of small communities touched by unspeakable violence. Today, we continue to mourn those we lost: George Chen, ``James'' Cheng Yuan Hong, Weihan ``David'' Wang, Katherine Breann Cooper, Christopher Ross Michaels-Martinez, and Veronika Weiss. We reach out to the injured who need our support as they heal, and we pray for the many others affected, including the families and friends the victims left behind. Our community grieves, and we struggle to make sense of the senseless. For many in a variety of places, this sadness and grief is also a frustration, frustration that more could have and should have been done to prevent this tragedy from the start. We think of other places where similar rampages have occurred so recently: Tucson, Carson City, Seal Beach, Atlanta, Oakland, Seattle, Aurora, Oak Creek, Minneapolis, Newtown, Washington Navy Yard, Santa Monica, Fort Hood. How many more of these mass shootings do we need before we act? We have all seen how a violent incident can bring public attention to the need for sensible gun safety measures.…”