“The question myself and so many people are asking at this time is…how immune are we becoming to these senseless mass shootings?”

That’s the question Eddie Weingart, 34, founder of Project End Gun Violence, raised to attendees and media at last night’s candlelight vigil for the victims of yesterday’s Navy Yard shooting. “How many this time?’ We ask as we watch the numbers of dead and injured climb on TV, Facebook, and Twitter,” Weingart said.

In yesterday’s vigil, organized by Weingart, a Silver Spring resident, about a dozen or so mourners, along with even more media personnel, showed up at Freedom Plaza to pay tribute to the Navy Yard victims, but also to make a statement and ask what our country is going to do to prevent more mass shootings and senseless gun violence from happening again.

“We’re now seeing mass shootings at our movie theaters, our places of worship, our children’s schools, at political rallies, at universities, on our military bases, on our shopping center parking lots.” Weingart cried out to the crowd.

Weingart’s Project Gun Violence, which was formed two days after the Newtown tragedy, confronts these questions and is working to develop solutions to propose to lawmakers about gun control and other ways to cut back gun violence in our country.

“We definitely need to look at other countries and use them as a role model,” Weingart told DCist, “how they’ve taken the same issues and combatted this, and have drastically reduced their gun violence-related deaths.” Weingart also says that the main and immediate thing lawmakers need to consider is more comprehensive background checks for purchasing guns. He also says that “another thing we need to look at is semi-automatic weapons and high-capacity magazines and really question why the American people—civilians—need this in their hands.”

As the flags along Freedom Plaza were being lowered to half-mast, most attendees of the vigil sat in silence with a single candlelight, paying respects to the fallen victims and wondering why another mass shooting has happened.

“Mass shootings are becoming almost as American as apple pie and baseball,” Weingart said to the crowd, “and that’s appalling.”