Last evening, a disgusted President Obama stood with parents who lost children in the Newtown tragedy and said: “All in all, today was a pretty shameful day for Washington.”

Shameful.

He’s absolutely right, and the absurdity couldn’t be clearer.

A minority of senators blocked legislation that would have made our country safer and better protected our children. Forty-five lawmakers stood in the way of improvements to the background check system that would help keep guns out of the hands of violent criminals and the mentally unstable.

What’s more? Ninety percent of Americans supported this approach.

The American Catholic Church wants to go even further. Our bishops have continued their call for an assault weapons ban: something the passed in 1994, but eventually expired a decade later.

They also signed onto to an interfaith letter that called on Congress to: 1) require universal background checks for all gun purchases; 2) limit civilian access to high-capacity weapons and ammunition magazines; 3) make gun trafficking a federal crime, and; 4) improve access to mental health care for those who may be prone to violence.

The bishops aren’t radicals. These approaches don’t infringe on the Second Amendment. Rather, they provide a beginning remedy to the culture of gun violence that is paralyzing our country.

Sister Mary Ann Walsh—the spokeswoman for the American bishops—argues that this position falls in line with the Church’s teaching on the dignity of all human life.

She writes that “it is clear assault weapons stand out dramatically as a threat to innocent life.”

Pope Benedict once said that the highest vocation of a public servant is to be an agent of peace. And if we want peace—according to Paul VI—we must work for justice.

Fear was the main catalyst of yesterday’s legislative decision. This is an unacceptable.

Justice must be the catalyst of the way forward.

Let’s do this again. Let’s get this right. Let’s fight the culture of death and give a witness to the sacredness of all human life, especially the lives of our children.