Ten years later, families are still mourning in Newtown, Connecticut.

Ten years from now, the families in Uvalde, Texas, will still be hurt and lost without their beloved children.

And in the meantime, will America do nothing to curb the epidemic of gun violence?

Probably. The next Newtown, the next Uvalde could be around the corner at any time.

And that’s not counting the shootings at parties and bars, with dozens or hundreds of rounds spewed from conversions that make hunting rifles into automatic weapons.

The death toll will still be shocking anywhere these shootings happen, but the fact is that they are far too common in our country. And in our communities, and soon enough in a school near you.

An elementary school, dear God.

What now?

First of all, the notion that nothing can be done is stupid and blind.

More civilized countries like France and Britain still have violence to deal with, but their cost in lives is minimal compared to that of the United States. An improvement over where we are is possible.

Second, we don’t need a complete ban on firearms or a politically exhausting debate over abstract interpretations of the Second Amendment to the Constitution.

Horror and grief do not excuse a responsible community of citizens from what can practically be done.

A middle approach to the policy and politics of the gun problem is required. That will make the death toll lower, although sadly never eliminate Newtowns or Uvaldes.

Obviously, though expensively, we need better mental health screening and treatment. That should be universally popular, but is that ever really funded to the level that is needed?

Pragmatic steps that are hugely popular in national polls are universal background checks on gun purchases.

Today, we live amid a slew of electronics and computer screens, so checks will not deter some of the most dangerous from getting into the wrong hands. But while not a perfect solution, it’s possible and needed.

We also need to return to responsible gun laws, some of which have gone by the wayside in the poisonous right-left debates. One of them is the approach, backed by some gun-rights groups, to eliminate the workarounds that can make some rifles into automatic weapons.

Today’s laws ban machine guns in private hands. A reasonable law could ban the devices that make rifles into the functional equivalent of machine guns.

Further, we don’t ever want to see those weapons turned on police officers and sheriff’s deputies in unequal fights like the ambush of our officers in Baton Rouge in 2016. Four officers died, two others were wounded.

And the evil perpetrated by Gavin Long that day cannot be addressed?

Law enforcement agencies once had the courage to stand up for these kinds of laws, although a federal law went by the wayside because of politics in 2004. It’s time for sheriffs and police chiefs to step up.

Along with the rest of us, particularly the millions of law-abiding hunters and sport-shooting enthusiasts. Nowhere more so in Louisiana, rightly and proudly known as the Sportsman’s Paradise.

We fall back on the folk wisdom of the late U.S. Sen. Russell B. Long of Baton Rouge, who once observed that if a man can’t hit a deer with the first seven shots, he doesn’t deserve to get him.

No, he doesn’t. And some good can come of limiting the magazines that convert into coffins for fourth-graders.