On November 5, 2017, a gunman opened fire on the congregation of a small church in Texas, killing more than two dozen people and injuring many more.

This tragedy comes a little more than a month after a massacre at a Las Vegas concert became the deadliest mass shooting in American history.

And nothing has changed. Nothing will change.

From Newtown to Columbine to Pulse to the Aurora theater, to Vegas and now to a church in Texas, mass casualties at the hands of deranged gun owners have become quickly accepted as the new normal in this country.

"Mental illness" hasn't been found to be the culprit, as in the Las Vegas incident. Neither white man was involved in ISIS or any other foreign terrorist organization. There is no logical reason why either should have had access to the amount of firepower that they did, to be able to cause such drastic harm.

And still, nothing.

Politicians and civilians alike are simply throwing their hands up in the air, claiming that they can't find a possible motive, and refusing to acknowledge the social structures that allow these sort of terrible crimes to happen over and over and over and over and over.

Let's make one thing abundantly clear. Thoughts and prayers don't help anyone.

It's time for government officials to get off their asses, address the root causes of this senseless gun violence, and stop this madness before we're inevitably sitting here a month from now talking about the latest "largest mass shooting."

We need to talk about the culture of hypermasculinity that allows a man with a domestic violence record to get his hands on guns and target his family.

We need to talk about the GOP's hard on for gun rights, at the expense of hundreds and thousands of innocent lives.

We need to talk about how another gun owner stopped this shooter and how that will be used as an excuse to avoid talking about gun control as if 27 lives is the appropriate price to pay for one man to play the hero.

We need to talk about how the GOP refuses to address that gun violence has gone on for too long while the NRA keeps spending millions of dollars promoting politicians that will support their stance on guns.

When the Second Amendment was written, guns could cause exponentially less harm than they can now. If the Founding Fathers were able to know what sorts of weapons would develop in the next two centuries, I could pretty much guarantee that they wouldn't be fighting to preserve people's rights to own assault weapons.

There is no logical reason why someone needs an automatic weapon to go hunting or to protect their home from invaders. To continue to put blind faith in the second amendment is not only foolish, it's civically irresponsible and it has a body count. Guns have changed. So why haven't we?

"Thoughts and prayers" aren't enough.

They never have been and they never will be.