Let me start by saying I’m sensitive to criticism about politicizing victims of tragedy.

“Don’t politicize victims” is one of the right’s favorite talking points in the immediate aftermath of horrors like the school shooting that claimed the lives of 17 students and teachers Wednesday in Parkland, Fla.

“Can’t we at least have one day to reflect and mourn the dead and to recognize the heroism of first responders and those who sacrificed their lives to save others before we make children pawns in some political debate?” some seem to ask.

On the contrary, I’m discussing gun violence today because I believe that’s what people intimately affected by it want us to do.

“Some of our policymakers and some people need to — they need to look in the mirror and take some action because ideas are great but without action, ideas stay ideas and children die,” Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School senior David Hogg told CNN Thursday morning.

I’m eager to listen to all views in the conversation about gun violence. I respect those who suggest potential solutions include arming teachers, installing metal detectors in schools and hiring security to guard entrances.

I’ll consider the views of those who express the belief that the solution is to improve access to treatment for people with mental illnesses. Or that gun violence is the fault of those who should have seen red flags in the behavior of future shooters and didn’t do enough to stop them.

I hear those who say we don’t do enough to prosecute criminals who break laws already on the books. There’s obviously substance to those views because a four-time convicted felon stands accused of shooting to death Chicago police Cmdr. Paul Bauer in the Loop this week.

Chicago’s issues with gun violence are different than the mass shootings that are increasing in frequency and lethalness. Fifty-eight dead at a country music concert in Las Vegas in 2017. Forty-nine killed at an Orlando nightclub in 2016.

“Mass shootings are getting deadlier. And the latest ones all have something new in common: The AR-15,” an online Los Angeles Time headline said Thursday.

Eventually, the conversation about gun violence has got to get around to talking about gun control legislation, or the lack of it.

Illinois 2nd District Rep. Robin Kelly, D-Matteson, said on the floor of the U.S. House Thursday the root cause of Congressional inaction on gun control is the millions of dollars that the gun lobby pours into Republican campaign accounts to prevent any common-sense action to save American lives.

“Despite your words, your prayer, you have proven over and over that you don’t care about anyone but yourselves and your contributions,” Kelly told colleagues.

I sense something different in the wake of the Parkland tragedy. I may be proven wrong, but something feels different now than when a shooter killed 58 in October in Las Vegas, and when another man killed 26 in a church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, in November.

I think there’s a realization that no one expects Republicans who control both houses of Congress and the White House to do anything about gun violence, other than offer hollow words of sympathy.

“It doesn’t seem to matter to our government that children are being shot to death day after day in schools,” Golden State Warriors coach and former Chicago Bulls player Steve Kerr told reporters Wednesday.

“It doesn’t matter that people are being shot at a concert, at a movie theater. It’s not enough, apparently, to move our leadership, our government, the people who are running this country to actually do anything.”

I think Americans realize this with a clarity that until now has been lacking in the debate about gun violence. People are seeing this isn’t a policy debate, it’s a political one.

It’s finally dawning on many Americans that if Congress won’t at least act on such widely supported, narrow positions as requiring universal background checks and banning assault weapons and bump stocks, then add gun violence to the list of issues that could affect voters’ decisions in the 2018 midterms and beyond.

Bess Kalb, a writer for “Jimmy Kimmel Live!” noticed Republicans offering condolences after Wednesday’s shooting. She also noted, on Twitter, how much those GOP politicians have accepted in campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association over the years.

The New York Times ran a similar story in October. Top Senate beneficiaries of NRA support include John McCain, R-Ariz. ($7.7 million), Richard Burr, R-N.C. ($6.9 million), Roy Blunt, R-Mo. ($4.5 million), Thom Tillis, R-N.C. ($4.4 million) and Cory Gardner, R-Co. ($3.9 million), the Times reported.

The NRA spent $30.3 million to help elect President Donald Trump in 2016, according to Open Secrets. The group paid for TV commercials that implied Democratic candidates would leave law-and-order citizens defenseless when intruders busted into their homes, Open Secrets said.

I wish we could get beyond campaign ads that play to emotional fears about security and instead engage in rational debate about what legislators could do to reduce gun violence.

But I know that won’t happen as long as the NRA strategy is effective. Their money helps Republicans win elections. The NRA is undeniably successful, and I tip my hat in awe of the organization’s power to influence laws and public opinion.

I’m left with no choice but to hope that one day, the tactics will no longer be as effective. Perhaps, we’ll reach a tipping point where people will vote against Republican candidates despite the financial support they receive from the NRA.

Sometimes I think I’m nothing more than a foot soldier in a greater culture war. Right vs. left, conservative vs. liberal, Republican vs. Democrat. On issues like gun violence, immigration or abortion, there used to be opportunities for serious debate and, eventually, sometimes compromise.

When the toll of 17 dead was announced late Wednesday, I researched whether teachers should have access to guns in school. Some jurisdictions in Texas and elsewhere already allow it. I don’t think it’s a good solution, but I’m willing to consider the possible merits.

My research led me to a political cartoon by Jim Morin of the Miami Herald, who has won two Pulitzer Prizes for his work. I shared on Facebook his cartoon depicting dead children in a classroom, accompanied by the text of the 2nd Amendment.

This incited debate. One friend said the cartoon was as graphic as an ISIS beheading video. I respectfully pushed back, saying it depicted the consequences of legislative inaction on gun violence.

My research further led me to the landmark 2008 U.S. Supreme Court ruling in the Heller case, in which the late Justice Antonin Scalia wrote for the majority in a 5-4 opinion. The court ruled that 2nd Amendment rights extend not only to militias, but to individuals who want to defend themselves in their homes.

My understanding of Scalia’s words, however, is that there is a big difference between the right to have a gun in a home for protection and the ability to use an assault weapon to commit mass murder.

“Nothing in our opinion should be taken to cast doubt on longstanding prohibitions on the possession of firearms by felons and the mentally ill, or laws forbidding the carrying of firearms in sensitive places such as schools and government buildings, or laws imposing conditions and qualifications on the commercial sale of arms,” Scalia wrote.

Scalia, a Ronald Reagan appointee and darling of the conservative movement, noted that, “like most rights, the right secured by the Second Amendment is not unlimited.” It is “not a right to keep and carry any weapon whatsoever in any manner whatsoever and for whatever purpose.”

And yet, here we are, a decade later, where the very concerns Scalia seemed to warn us about have become today’s reality, and the NRA-supported, GOP-controlled Congress refuses to do anything about it.

tslowik@tronc.com

Twitter @tedslowik