June 14, 2017, began like any other American morning. Mail trucks were beginning their routes, early morning commuters were sitting in traffic, and shots were fired.

However, this day was a little different from the days of Sandy Hook, Pulse nightclub, Aurora, Fort Hood, San Bernadino, Charleston, and the scores of other shootings.

This was the morning a contingent of our Republican legislators were practicing for a charity baseball game. A single gunman cornered the congressmen and their aides in an enclosed baseball field, shooting five of them. House Majority Whip Steve Scalise was seriously wounded.

The gunman, who had a history of domestic violence and a hatred for Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton, was armed with an assault rifle. The capitol guards protecting some of the highest officials in the country only had pistols.

How could this happen?

The very people who block gun control legislation at every turn, who swear up and down that guns keep our country safe, just found themselves on the other side of the kind of weapon that even some past Republican presidents thought should be banned or at least restricted.

Sure, this particular gunman did not acquire his military grade firearm legally, but it is as easy as apple pie to do so. Coming from a town where angry teenage boys buy AR-15s as a rite of passage (many times during bad breakups), I cannot force myself to believe it is a good idea to make weapons of war more accessible than mental health care.

Assault rifles are not just fun grown-up toys.

They were invented to be a deadly and unfair advantage in combat. They give evil people of all political affiliations the power to carry out the darkest atrocities.

The deadliest mass shootings in American history have had a wide variety of motivations, but assault rifles are consistently linked to higher death tolls. The attack on our congress members resulted only in the death of the shooter, but it could have been so much worse.

Listen, I grew up around guns.

I know and trust responsible gun owners who have been properly trained and vetted. I also know people who want to hoard assault rifles for a hypothetical government takeover. Shouldn’t the very real cost of easily accessible weapons and the countless lives lost senselessly take precedence over a hypothetical doomsday situation?

No one wants to take away guns, but there needs to be some middle ground, some restrictions. I know people who really want these guns will not listen to me because not even the pleading of families who have lost loved ones in mass shootings have moved them. Is it not terrifying that not even the lawmakers who abide the NRA at every turn are safe?