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“The president needs to step up here and set some guidelines for what he would do,” Sen. Roy Blunt (R-Mo.) said Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press.” The subject was gun control, and the choice of words was a bit ironic — if not pathetic. Everyone knows by now that President Trump will never step up on this issue — or that, if he steps up one day, he will step down the next. Hiding behind his failure is a way for Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (Ky.), Mr. Blunt and other Republican senators to abdicate their legislative authority and their responsibility to the country. (9/9)

Whenever a terrible mass shooting occurs, the pro-gun lobby — and politicians pledging fealty to it — argue that any particular gun reform proposal would have done nothing to prevent this particular crime. President Donald Trump, who received $30 million in campaign contributions from the National Rifle Association in 2016, echoed this argument recently, telling reporters that so far as mass shootings "going back, even five or six or seven years, for the most part, as strong as you make your background checks, they would not have stopped any of it." (9/9)

For all those who work to reduce gun violence in Ohio, our governor’s recent call to close background check loopholes is a welcome step in the right direction. There are many ways that better laws can make Ohio safer. Common sense background checks are the right place to start.There are no simple answers to gun violence in Ohio. But background checks that cover all gun sales and transfers (with limited exceptions) have a proven record of making a difference. (David Eggert, 9/8)

Texas, where 29 people were massacred last month in two separate shootings, can no longer afford to sit idly by and do nothing. There were encouraging signs over the past week that state leaders want to do something — that they care about the many families that have been ruined by these killings. They’re starting to put forth some commonsense solutions to try to curb them. (9/9)