Three days. Three mass shootings. One state. Nineteen dead.

These numbers are stark enough that, in a sane society, they’d engender outrage and then change. But this is the United States, and when it comes to our tolerance of mass gun deaths, we are truly exceptional. Thanks to our feckless supreme court and the Republican party death cult, even the most progressive parts of the country have no real ability to crack down on guns and keep their residents safe. We are collectively stuck living in a dangerous, weapon-happy dystopia, all because reactionary, fearful conservatives want to cosplay as tough guys with deadly toys.

In three days, 19 people were killed and many more injured in two back-to-back mass shootings of mostly Asian people in California, over a weekend that should have been a celebration of Lunar New Year. One shooter, a 72-year-old man, opened fire at a dance hall frequented by senior citizens in Monterey Park, killing 11 and wounding nine. Another, a 66-year-old man, killed seven at a farm near Half Moon Bay. And finally, in what is sadly representative of typical mass shootings in the United States, a shooter killed one and injured four in what newspapers are describing as a “gun battle” in Oakland.

That tally doesn’t even count last week, when six people were murdered in what police say was a cartel-style execution and likely a gang-related killing. The dead include a 16-year-old girl and her 10-month-old baby.

In the first three weeks of 2023, there have been 39 mass shootings in America. Gun violence is now the leading killer of American children.

What is there to say about a society that sacrifices its babies at the altar of firearms? What kind of “freedom” allows civilians to amass weapons designed to exact maximal damage on the human body, but doesn’t give citizens the basic right to go to the movies, the shops, schools, places of worship and even their living rooms or front porches without facing down the pervasive threat of deadly and random violence? How do you reason with people who continue to claim, in the face of all evidence and the very fact that America is the only nation not at war that experiences this level of death and destruction from guns, that guns are not the problem?

The truth is that most Americans, including many who vote Republican, are sick of living like this. A whopping 71% of Americans want to see stricter gun laws, and significant numbers live in fear: nearly half say it’s likely that they will personally be a victim of gun violence at some point.

In some liberal states, including California, legislators have acted. California’s gun laws are still remarkably lax compared with the rest of the world – there is not, for example, the kind of licensing process for a gun that any teenager needs to go through in order to drive a car – but the state nevertheless is on the stricter end of the deranged American spectrum: California has red flag laws, which allow police to seize guns from people deemed threatening; a ban on assault-style weapons; and magazine limits. The state has also, of course, been repeatedly sued by gun enthusiasts who want unfettered access to any weapon of their choosing, and believe even these small regulations are unreasonable.

But California is not an island, and American states do not have enforced borders between them. There’s nothing stopping someone from buying a gun in a more conservative state and bringing it into a liberal one. This is exactly what happens in many cities with the highest rates of gun violence. Chicago, for example, sits in a state with strict gun laws (Illinois), but right next door to one that is basically a weaponry free-for-all (Indiana). One study found that 60% of illegal guns found in Chicago came from outside Illinois, with one in five from Indiana.

States are also increasingly limited in what they can do about gun violence, thanks to a supreme court that has in the last 15 years radically revised a century of jurisprudence on guns to read into the constitution a ridiculous and ahistorical interpretation of the second amendment. Over and over again, when states try to pass the kind of commonsense gun legislation that voters want, rightwing gun groups sue; too often, they win.

The scourge of gun violence in America remains not because Americans are an inherently violent people or because there are too many “bad guys” running around. The scourge of gun violence in America remains because the Republican party insists that it remain – because the Republican party works overtime to ensure that deadly weapons proliferate, does close to nothing to prevent even small children from being gunned down at school, and insists on appointing federal judges who will allow unlicensed and untrained citizens to amass weapons of war.

What can you call this other than a party that embraces and perpetuates a culture of death, and shrugs off the mass murder of even its youngest and most vulnerable? Can a society reasonably call itself civilized, let alone great or free or “pro-life”, when it voluntarily allows its children to be slaughtered and calls it liberty?

Liberal states can certainly do more to decrease gun violence, including ramping up enforcement and, crucially, requiring a license to have a gun. Unfortunately, however, we are hamstrung by a minority of barbaric, cruel and gun-crazed countrymen, and the party that represents them. Until the Republican party and its core supporters decide that they’re tired of living in a country where grandmas get gunned down while dancing and kindergartners are murdered in their classrooms, we will all be forced to live in a nation that offers nothing more than thoughts and prayers as the bullets fly and the body count mounts.

• Jill Filipovic is the author of the The H-Spot: The Feminist Pursuit of Happiness