This is an opinion column.

Tell me.

Tell me why I must write this column. Again. And again.

Tell me why my heart aches. Again.

Tell me why Hueytown funeral director Clifford Toney must prepare his grandchild’s body for burial. His 17-year-old granddaughter, Shaunkivia Nicole Smith, one of the four young lives gunned down Saturday night at a Sweet 16 birthday party in Dadeville.

“Keke,” as everyone called her, was a senior at Dadeville High School who planned on attending UAB. Planned on becoming a nurse. Planned on life.

Tell me why Toney, the owner of Integrity Funeral Home, must hold a viewing for his granddaughter in the chapel there before returning her to Dadeville.

“We ask for prayers,” he said, speaking softly Monday morning in the parking lot outside his business. “It’s tough. I see this all the time, but now it’s at home.”

Tell me why there are so many Clifford Toneys. So many parents, grandparents, loved ones, and friends for whom the national plaque of gun violence is at home.

At home in Dadeville. In Birmingham. In Nashville. In Montgomery. In Uvalde. In Mobile. In Buffalo.

In America.

Too many.

Too many to keep ignoring. To keep dismissing with a tweet. With useless thoughts and wearying prayers.

Tell me why, Republican lawmakers. Please.

Tell me why I am still angry—no, incensed at your ceaseless disrespectful, insensitive, non-sensical inaction, in Alabama and beyond. Lawmakers, but only loosely so. Because you’d rather remain heads buried in sand and hands tucked snugly into the gun lobby pockets than create laws that might save a child. Might save us. Or you.

Tell me why you steadfastly refuse to address reasonable ways to limit access to guns—especially military-style AR-15s—by those ill-equipped to use them. By those not trained to use them. By those not mentally and emotionally stable enough to possess them.

By children not yet mature enough to grasp the inevitability of a trigger squeeze, when just one may ignite a pepper spray of bullets and a kickback they can’t control. To grasp the end.

Or too pained to care.

Tell me why state Sen. Merika Coleman, who chairs the Alabama Legislative Black Caucus, must re-, re-, re-, re-introduce a bill proposing Alabama adopt a red-flag law that would allow law enforcement and mental health professionals to remove guns from those deemed through a process to be an immediate danger to themselves or others until they are afforded a hearing within two weeks. Such laws are designed especially to protect someone living in the same household or in a domestic relationship with the gun owner.

To protect someone you know.

To protect, perhaps, even you.

Nineteen states have red-flag laws—including Florida, for goodness’ sake. Many emerged with bipartisan coalitions. Some were even championed by Republicans, as was the case in Florida. In that state, CNN reports, judges have invoked it more than 8,000 times since the law was created in 2018, according to the Office of State Courts Administrator.

Tell me why we can’t get a red-flag law passed in Alabama. Please.

Coleman’s Senate Bill 123, the Gun Violence Protective Order Act, is with the Senate Judiciary Committee and should see light soon. (Public hearings were previously held when Coleman dropped the bill as a member of the House.)

On Monday, Coleman said a Republican senate colleague reached out to her and discussed being a potential co-sponsor of what may be yet another version of her red-flag bill. “He has not given me permission yet to say his name,” the senator said with a smile.

Coleman and several other lawmakers, organized in conjunction with the National Black Caucus of State Legislators, gathered in front of Toney’s funeral home in the state senator’s district demanding—yet again—what they repeatedly called “common sense” gun legislation. They were there not merely with the grieving owner’s permission; he demanded it.

“I told him, ‘I feel a little icky about even having a discussion about a location,’” Coleman shared. “He said, ‘You don’t even have to ask me. Have it here. This killing has got to stop.’

“We must do something. I am tired of hearing the wails and cries of parents and families who’ve lost loved ones and elected officials have not acted.”

Tell me why a child in Alabama not old enough to walk into an ABC store and buy alcohol can legally buy a gun. Rep. Juandalynn Givan said she will drop a bill Tuesday seeking to raise the gun-buying age in the state to 21, which has been previously brushed off the shoulders of the Republican super-stubborn super majority.

“If we can’t find the political will to ban assault rifles together,” Givan said, “at least we should not sell [’weapons of war,’ she calls them] to our children.”

Tell me why the gun “rights” zealots are so comfortable being wrong. Wrong in their interpretation of the second amendment. Wrong about the founding fathers’ meaning of the “right to bear arms”.

And, with each passing killing at the hands of a gun, so morally wrong.

“[We] support the second amendment,” Givan said Tuesday. “We’re speaking about a level of accountability with having access, as well as a level of maturity and the knowledge of what it means to be a licensed career of that weapon.”

Tell me why you proudly fast-tracked a new permitless carry law last year in the face of these damning realities (which Givan shared emphatically): states that weakened firearms permit restrictions experienced an 11% increase in gun-related homicides, according to a 2017 study; as well as a 13%-15% rise in violent crime, a 2018 study found.

Tell me why you swift-passed a law this year enacting mandatory sentences for fentanyl distributors, gliding it through like it was on a Slip ‘N Slide, yet eschew any suggestions to similarly penalize those who knowingly provide a gun to anyone who uses the weapon to commit a crime.

Tell me. Please.

“It’s time for action,” Sen. Rodger Smitherman said Monday in front of the funeral home. “All these tasks forces, we don’t need to do any of that. It’s time to take real and immediate action.”

I’m not so naive to believe what you do will singularly heal our plaque. Yet something, anything, may offer the salve of saving a life. A child’s life. The life of someone you know.

Or yours.

“Dadeville showed that no community or state in America is safe,” added Givan.

Tell me why. Please.

More columns by Roy S. Johnson

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MLK’s ‘Letter from Birmingham’ Jail’ is not divisive, should be taught in all schools

Trump charges evoke Nixon memories; how lucky are we?

Even amid trash taunting, embrace Angel Reese and Caitlin Clark, in full Black and white

Heroism takes many forms; Nashville, Huntsville tragedies may tweak police narrative

After Gov Ivey signs law-and-order fentanyl bill, real work will just begin

Woke is the far right’s sky is falling; it fell on them

Alabama Republican’s ‘parents’ rights’ bill smells like ‘states’ rights’; I’m holding my nose

I’m a Pulitzer Prize finalist for commentary and winner of the Edward R. Murrow prize for podcasts: “Unjustifiable,” co-hosted with John Archibald. My column appears in AL.com, as well as the Lede. Subscribe to my free weekly newsletter, The Barbershop, here. Reach me at [email protected], follow me at twitter.com/roysj, or on Instagram @roysj