Gun control is once again the nation’s topic of discussion after the Las Vegas massacre last week. White House press secretary Sarah Elizabeth Huckabee Sanders declared on the subject matter, “There’s a time and place for a political debate, but now is the time to unite as a country.”

Now is precisely the time to talk about gun control.

Let’s start with a little history lesson on the creation of the Second Amendment. The Constitution states, “A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear arms, shall not be infringed.” This amendment was created in order for citizens to protect themselves against a tyrannical federal government.

A majority of Americans, including gun owners, want laws that keep terrorists from committing homicide and mass murders. But President Trump has declined to discuss gun control bills, even as a bill was proposed to outlaw the equipment used by Stephen Paddock, the Las Vegas terrorist.

“We’re not going to talk about that today,” Trump responded to a reporter at the University Medical Center in Las Vegas. “We won’t talk about that.”

What we should be doing is precisely that. There is absolutely no reason for anyone to have more than 30 guns. Paddock legally acquired 33 guns in the past year alone and was able to convert semi automatic AR-15s into something that resembled close to a machine gun.

Shouldn’t we be talking about gun control, Mr. Trump?

The GOP has talked about banning abortion, banning gay marriage, banning the trans community from the military. But when guns come up in the conversation, suddenly the narrative is, “Guns? Banning things will never work! People will always find a way to acquire them.”

After the Port Arthur massacre of 1996 that resulted in the death of 35 people, the Prime Minister of Australia, John Howard, introduced strict gun control laws within the country.

Howard also formulated an act that introduced uniform firearms licensing and restricted the private ownership of high capacity semiautomatic rifles and shotguns and pump-action shotguns. Since 1996, Australia has not had a mass shooting.

Columbine was the time to talk about gun control. Sandy Hook was the time to talk about gun control. The Pulse shooting was the time to talk about gun control. Prayers and thoughts are not useful without action to accompany it. The Pulse shooting of 2016 was, at the time, the deadliest mass shooting just over a year ago and yet we are still seeing gun tragedies on the news.

We need stricter laws to monitor who would have access to the guns. We need stricter background checks for gun buyers. We need to make sure people on the no-fly list will not have access to guns. We need to make sure gun buyers bypass the mental health scan before they are able to purchase guns.

According to a poll by Axios, 89 percent of both Republicans and Democrats oppose allowing the mentally ill to purchase guns and over 80 percent in each party would ban those on the no-fly list from purchasing guns.

So why are we still not talking about gun control?

What we don’t need is another mass shooting that reset the records. What we don’t need is more people dying because some “lone-wolves” decided their lives were not as worthy as theirs. What we don’t need is reading about surviving victims mourning over the death of their love ones because they went to a concert.

The time to talk about gun control was yesterday.