In a moving speech denouncing the NRA, Jimmy Kimmel, his voice breaking with emotion, tried to hold back the tears. But it was a difficult fight for him because he, like many of us, doesn’t know what it’s going to take to end the cycle of mass shootings that have resulted in far too many deaths in this country.

Kimmel, who has four children of his own, was, of course, talking about the deadly shooting at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde, Texas that occurred on Monday, just days after another deadly shooting occurred at a supermarket in Buffalo, New York.

“Here we are again, on another day of mourning in this country,” Kimmel said straight to the camera, without an audience present. “Once again, we grieve for the little boys and girls whose lives have been ended and whose families have been destroyed.”

On that terrible day in Uvalde, 19 children and two teachers were killed, and as CNN notes, this isn’t the first time Kimmel has spoken with such conviction. He has also spoken out about the state of healthcare in the U.S. after his son Billy was born and also about the deadly mass shooting in Las Vegas, his hometown.

On Wednesday, Kimmel spoke for just under six minutes about the deadly shooting in Texas and about gun control.

“While our leaders on the right — the Americans in Congress and at Fox News and these other outlets  — warn us not to politicize this,” he said. “They immediately criticize our President for even speaking about doing something to stop it. Because they don’t want to speak about it. Because they know what they’ve done and they know what they haven’t done, and they know that’s indefensible. So they’d rather sweep this under the rug.”

He added that the majority of Americans support “common-sense gun control (per CNN)” but that our “cowardly” elected leaders aren’t “listening to us.”

“They’re listening to the NRA,” Kimmel said. “They’re listening to the people who write them checks, who keep them in power because that’s the way politics works. That’s the idea we settle on, that’s what we tell ourselves, but it doesn’t have to be that way. Not for this.”

And Kimmel said this is not “a time for moments of silence.”

“This is a t ime to be loud — and to stay loud — and not stop until we fix this,” he said. “Some people say this is a mental health problem. Others say it is a gun problem. It is both and it can be both. So let’s work on both of those.”

He also noted that even though it’s only May, the country has already faced numerous school shootings. Insider reports there have been 214 mass shootings in 2022, while NPR reports there have been 27 school shootings this year.

“How does this make sense to anyone?” he asked. “These are our children.”

Then Kimmel ended with a call for action.

“So if you care about this — and we all do, doesn’t matter what party we vote for, we all care about this — we need to make sure that we do everything we can… to make sure that unless they do something drastic that let’s make sure that not one of any of these politicians ever holds office again.”

I don’t know anyone who’s not depressed by the tragedies that have happened this week. It’s hard to hold your head up. I’ve lost friends to gun violence and had a gun waved in my face. This country is being held hostage by the NRA and the gun manufacturers. There is just no other way to say it. We have to break their stranglehold.

How tragic is it that parents and their children have to worry that going to school might be deadly?