Thoughts and prayers? Bah, humbug!

I wonder if the members of Congress who offer their knee-jerk 'thoughts and prayers' to the families of the victims of one of this country's many, many mass shootings ever call or visit those families in person, expose themselves to the profound, heart-wrenching grief.  I wonder what their prayers consist of.  Perhaps "Dear Lord, I wish (name of shooter here) hadn't had access to all those military-grade assault weapons with large capacity ammunition feeding devices.  Oh Lord, show me how to end this violence without having to enact reasonable gun restriction laws."

It seems to me that the members of Congress are in the unique position of being able to actually do something concrete to help curtail this violence.  Unlike the rest of us, they can do something more effective than offering thoughts and prayers, the which, to my knowledge, have not helped a single person and have not done anything at all to lower the numbers attached to each mass shooting, or any shooting, for that matter.  It's so easy to forget that each one of those numbers represents not just a person, but all the people who love that person, whose lives are forever torn by that person's slaying.

If a member of Congress lost someone in a shooting, would that strengthen his or her spine enough that he or she might finally be ready to say "Enough is enough.  We must do something about this."  Would that Congressperson finally realize that thoughts and prayers are not only not enough, they are nothing at all?  They are empty gestures meant to make everyone feel better - everyone except those dealing with the ugly aftermath of the shooting: the shattered lives, the broken hearts, the anger, fear, despair, loneliness.

Aren't they asking themselves "What will it take to end this?"  Or is the problem that they know what it will take and are simply too cowardly, or too in love with their own guns, to make the necessary changes to our laws?  They can't possibly think that this country's growing gun violence is not a problem.  Why oh why oh why don't they do something?