A growing number of teens and parents - led by the brave and determined Parkland, Fla., students who know what it's like to be under fire from a madman with an assault rifle - get it.
They understand that someone has to do something to stop America's gun mania and violence. Think about it. In the span of just three and a half days last week, we had two local gun scares. Hamilton Place mall was evacuated after a man brandished a gun and Dalton High School was put on lockdown when a teacher known to struggle with mental health issues fired a gun out of a classroom window.
A strong majority, 70 percent, of Americans get it.
They support generally stricter gun laws, according to a new CNN poll. The more specific the gun measure suggested in the poll question, the higher the support ticks up: 87 percent back laws to prevent convicted felons and people with mental health problems from obtaining guns, 71 percent support raising the firearm purchase age from 18 to 21, 63 percent want a ban on the sale and possession of high-capacity or extended ammunition magazines, and 57 percent back a ban on the manufacture, sale and possession of rifles capable of semi-automatic fire, such as the AR-15 used in the Parkland and Las Vegas shootings.
Corporate America also gets it. Even when it potentially hurts the corporate bottom line.
Dick's Sporting Goods, the nation's largest sporting goods retailer, on Wednesday adopted a new policy of raising the minimum age for all gun sales to 21 - no matter what state laws allow. Dick's also stopped selling assault-style weapons on its own, and will not sell high-capacity magazines that allow shooters to fire far more rounds without reloading.
"We know there will be some backlash," Dick's CEO Edward Stack said on CNN, noting that the Parkland school shooting survivors' push for stronger gun control measures was the catalyst for the company's action.
"As we sat and talked about it with our management team, it was - to a person - that this is what we need to do. These kids talk about enough is enough. We concluded if these kids are brave enough to organize and do what they're doing, we should be brave enough to take this stand," Stack said. "We don't want to be a part of this story anymore. We have a responsibility to these kids."
Dick's isn't alone. Walmart has followed suit, and a number of companies that had sponsorship relations with the National Rifle Association severed those relations in recent days. First National Bank offered two NRA cards, each with a $40 bonus for NRA members. Not anymore. The rental car company that operates Enterprise, National and Alamo dumped the NRA, as has Symantec (a security company that owns Norton and Lifelock). Simplisafe, MetLife, Chubb, and Teladoc joined them. More than a dozen companies - including Delta Air Lines - took action. Responsibility.
Everybody seems to get it. Every group from almost every walk of life - except government. Most notably, Republican-majority government.
President Donald Trump thinks the answer is more guns - wielded by teachers. His support for other reforms remains unclear from day to day.
Georgia's state legislature and its lieutenant governor, Casey Cagle, seem to think the gun safety reform answer lies in protecting the NRA.
After Delta, headquartered at "the world's busiest" Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport, said it would stop offering discounted fares to NRA members, Cagle, a GOP gubernatorial candidate, vowed to kill state legislation designed to provide a $50 million sales tax exemption on jet fuel, of which Delta would be the primary beneficiary.
"I will kill any tax legislation that benefits @Delta unless the company changes its position and fully reinstates its relationship with @NRA," Cagle tweeted. "Corporations cannot attack conservatives and expect us not to fight back."
Someone might just as well have handed Cagle an AR-15 and turned him loose in the state house. Delta is one of the largest employers in Georgia, employing more than 33,000 in 2015. Cagle's opposition effectively prevents the tax break from becoming law. And can anyone spell one more way Georgia's Republican legislators could persuade Amazon to strike Atlanta off of its new 50,000-job second headquarters shortlist?
But Georgia lawmakers' near-blackmail choice to Delta isn't just stupid, it also is an unethical, evil, stomach-turning version of quid pro quo: Be nice to our NRA buddies and donors if you want this government tax break that we control.
Children shot? What children? Could Georgia's response be any closer to the disconnect between common sense gun safety reform and the very government neglect that the Parkland students and parents are rallying the nation against?
As usual, city governments - where the law enforcement rubber meets the road - do get it.
Sam Massell, the former Atlanta mayor who is now the head of the Buckhead Coalition business group, told The New York Times the Delta quagmire is "embarrassing."
"I don't believe in blackmail, and I'm sorry to use such a dirty word, but that's almost what it tastes like," Massell said. "That's terrible. That's not Georgia's image. That's backwoods stuff that doesn't belong at all."
In Dallas, city officials told the NRA its group will be "met with opposition" if it holds its scheduled May conference there.
Right now, some 40 competing bills and amendments are currently sitting in limbo on Capitol Hill as lawmakers, most of them Republicans, refuse to consider - let alone vote for - any meaningful new legislation.
Resist. Fight with your votes. And fight with your pocketbooks. Reward the Dick's Sporting Goods of the world, and boycott the exploiters of gun violence and death.