Buffalo, N.Y., couldn't even bury the last of the grandmothers gunned down in a grocery store before there was another mass murder in this country.
The latest target was an elementary school in a small Texas city, where another teenager wielding a weapon of war killed 19 children and two teachers.
This 18-year-old shooter, like the racist teenager who went hunting for Black people in that Buffalo grocery store just 10 days earlier, had legally acquired the semiautomatic rifle he used in his killing spree.
There have actually been other mass shooting incidents in the U.S. during this same time span. But these mass murders in Buffalo, where 10 mostly elderly people were killed and three others injured, and Uvalde, the nation's second-worst school shooting, have touched the hearts of Americans -- and angered many of us.
The Buffalo and Uvalde incidents were so bad, so painful to their respective communities, they've sparked what appears to be real talk of gun safety measures.
The last time such talk resulted in action was in 2018, when young people who survived a mass shooting at their Parkland, Fla., high school led a national protest, the March for Our Lives. They then successfully lobbied the Florida Legislature to change that state's law at least a little.
Those young people had seen yet another gun-wielding teenager kill 17 and injure 17 more in their school, the same school where the victims went through active-shooter drills trying to prepare for such a tragedy.
Significantly, the Parkland students also organized voter registration drives among students and have worked to spread their movement to other states.
Every year, the voter pool grows with the addition of young people. They bring a new intensity to the gun safety debate, having grown up fearing an active shooter in their schools.
Another March for Our Lives is planned for Saturday, June 11, in cities across the nation. Pay attention to how well the protests draw and who joins the protests.
Maybe young people, armed with their experience-informed votes, can do what older generations haven't. Maybe they can persuade politicians to address the ever-multiplying number of guns in America, most notably those mutilating, semiautomatic weapons designed to kill as many people as possible quickly.
In Uvalde, some of the children's bodies were so torn up by those high-powered bullets they had to be identified by matching their DNA to their parents.
Here's reason to expect such images to stay in voters' minds: These shootings happened in relatively close proximity to the Nov. 8 general election, which is 160 days away and even closer to primaries or runoffs yet to be held in many states.
Now is the time for voters, or potential voters, who want change in gun-safety laws in their legislatures or in the U.S. Congress, to press candidates to act -- the sooner the better.
Otherwise, most will dress up in camo and carry guns for campaign ads declaring their avowed support for the Second Amendment. That's the reflexive position for candidates who want the National Rifle Association's backing and support from the most conservative of voters.
If people want change in the gun laws, including raising the age limit to buy one of those deadly weapons of war, they should speak up now before the elections. Enough voices for change could just bring action to make America safer.
There is a conversation going on among select senators to see what the participating Republicans might accept.
As always, with the Senate's current makeup, Democrats need 10 Republican votes to get anything past the filibuster.
These talks are so new it isn't totally clear what measures they are considering or even if all Democrats can be counted on to support the package. Nevertheless, every senator is, or should be, on alert to the potential impact of these negotiations.
Not only could quick action ease public concerns about gun control, but it also might alter angry voter decisions in these upcoming elections.
Yes, there is that nagging concern that there will be no action, that voters won't be triggered to vote against candidates who refuse to reform gun laws.
After all, nothing happened after the 2012 slaughter of 6- and 7-year-olds at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. That was an election year, too, but the murders of 20 first-graders and six school staff members happened on Dec. 14, well after that year's elections.
So, hang hope on the proximity of this year's elections as motivation for citizens and their representatives to do something about gun violence.
Remember those whose lives have senselessly been cut short, their grieving families and all these communities that will never be the same.
Enough is enough.