Editor's note: Anthony Moretti is an associate professor at the Department of Communication and Organizational Leadership at Robert Morris University. The article reflects the author's opinions and not necessarily those of CGTN.

The images emanating from Uvalde, Texas, on May 24 were all too familiar to Americans. 

Another mass shooting carried out by another teenager at another school. This time, 21 students and teachers were killed and 17 others were injured. It was the second-deadliest school shooting in U.S. history. 

Uvalde was described by one U.S. magazine as "a working-class, majority-Latino city of about 15,000 people 85 miles west of San Antonio." Most of the school's students carry Hispanic surnames.

This awful event occurred 10 days after a white supremacist unleashed his fury outside a supermarket in Buffalo, New York, and gunned down 10 people, all of whom were Black. Three other people were injured.

The list of teenagers murdering teachers and students throughout the U.S. keeps growing. Consider that in the past 10 years alone, shootings by teenagers on a school or college campus have caused deaths in Alabama, Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Mexico, Nevada, North Carolina, Ohio, Oregon, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Texas and Washington. 

Not included in this list is the mass murder carried out by a 20-year-old at a Connecticut school in 2012. On that day, 20 kids – ages six and seven – and six adults were killed in what remains the deadliest elementary school shooting in the country's history.  

In the days that followed that horrible event, former U.S. President Barack Obama all but pleaded with Republicans in Congress to work with him on a meaningful gun legislation. They refused, and the most ferocious do-nothing Republican was (and remains) Mitch McConnell, who throughout Obama's term in office was the Senate majority or minority leader.

In 2019, NBC News described Sen. McConnell's opposition to gun reform this way: "McConnell has been a fierce opponent of gun restrictions throughout his 35-year Senate career and has reaped the benefits of a close relationship with the National Rifle Association (NRA)." Indeed, he has received political contributions from the NRA totaling more than $1.2 million. Almost 20 other Republicans have received more, and collectively the GOP has refused to consider any substantive changes to gun laws that might prevent another mass shooting.

That is what the NRA demands from the politicians who receive a lot of its loot: Do not do anything that might make it harder for any American to get his or her hands on a gun.

According to the Pew Research Center, for every 100,000 Americans, roughly 13 died from a bullet in 2020 – the highest rate since the mid-1990s.When you extrapolate that to a population of about 330 million, it means an average of 42,900 Americans will die each year from guns. Throughout the Asian and European parts of the world, the average number of deaths from guns is nowhere near that figure. 

No one should be surprised; this blood lust is brought on by gun lust. According to the organization Small Arms Survey, there were an estimated 394 million guns in American hands in 2018. Viewed another way, there were 120.5 guns for every 100 Americans. No other country on Earth came close to that level of firepower. 

One horrible reality for Americans is that as post-pandemic life begins, shootings on school grounds are increasing. CNN reported the shooting at the Uvalde elementary school marked "at least the 30th shooting at a K-12 school in 2022. So far in 2022 there have been at least 39 shootings in K-12 schools, colleges and universities, resulting in at least 10 deaths and 51 injuries."

And so on Tuesday night, another president – this time Joe Biden – went on national television to ask Americans to pray for the dead. And for a moment his anger boiled, and he said: "As a nation, we have to ask: When in God's name are we going to stand up to the gun lobby? When in God's name will we do what we all know in our gut needs to be done?"

Mr. President, I know the answer. Until Republicans use the same pro-life moral compass that they rigidly hold onto when it comes to talking about abortion and agree to reform U.S. gun laws, it is only a matter of time before another mass shooting will be carried out by another teenager at another school. And no one on the right dares to ask publicly how that bitter truth squares with the idea of American "exceptionalism."

(If you want to contribute and have specific expertise, please contact us at opinions@cgtn.com. Follow @thouse_opinions on Twitter to discover the latest commentaries in the CGTN Opinion Section.)