This is an archived article that was published on sltrib.com in 2015, and information in the article may be outdated. It is provided only for personal research purposes and may not be reprinted.

When my daughter was about 4, she and I drove out to Hillsboro, just west of Portland, Ore., to look at what has come to be called "Old Scots Church." That church has something rare in the western United States, a graveyard surrounding the building. Like the church, it goes back some 150 years, and is full of pioneer settlers to the Willamette Valley.

I love to look at graveyards and read the markers, imagining the lives of those great souls who lived so many decades before Facebook and got along fine without it. My daughter, not yet a reader, made a children's game out of the visit. She jumped from one marker to another without walking on the grass, trying to see how far she might hop on stone alone.

Well, my daughter is now 27, and I hadn't thought of this in years until I sat down recently with Salt Lake Tribune's wonderful photographer Leah Hogsten. Leah told me how in September 2013 she was assigned to photograph the funeral of Draper Police Sgt. Derek Johnson. She was moved by the loss to the community and especially moved by what the loss meant to Sgt. Johnson's wife, Shante, and their 6-year-old son, Ben. Then, as she was taking a wider-angle shot of the proceedings, Leah noticed that she was standing on the grave stone of Vanessa Quinn, a beautiful young woman who Utahns will remember died in the Trolley Square shootings in February 2007. Just a few feet of grass separated the graves of two wonderful young people who we in this valley miss (whether we know it or not) every single day.

Just last week it was announced that in this country we now suffer more than one mass shooting per day on average. Only one week in April went entirely without a single bloody catastrophe. These mass shootings are like blood dripping on a stone, and the drops are coming more and more frequently. How long before we don't even notice the flood? Perish the thought.

How many young Utahns have to die, prematurely filling our cemeteries? Well, I grant you, stone masons aren't exactly, pardon me, making "a killing," but gun manufacturers certainly are. I say this because, while the NRA would have us believe they are advocating for public safety, more and more of us are waking up to the reality that they don't give a rip for public safety. They are merely a lobby, dressed up in the American flag, who are in bed with those who make billions off the sale of guns in this country. They are the group standing in the way of what more and more of us know are common-sense gun restrictions; restrictions that will not end mass shootings but which will clearly decrease the likelihood of them.

Last week we heard a verbal fist fight going on between Republican presidential contenders who have offered their "prayers" to the families of the victims of the San Bernardino shootings, and those from both political parties who have said that these times call for more than prayers, they call for action. I couldn't help but think of what the Nobel Prize-winning author, Isaac Singer, once said about prayer. He said, "I only pray when I'm in trouble, but I'm in trouble all of the time." Yes, and so are we all.

The Rev. Scott Dalgarno is pastor of Wasatch Presbyterian Church in Sugar House.