Do you remember Rachel Scott? The girl who wanted to change the world with kindness and compassion?
No?
How about Jessica Ghawi, the self-described "redheaded Texan spitfire" who dated a hockey player and started a career in sports journalism?
Doesn't ring any bells?
OK, you must remember John Roll — a federal judge, appointed by George W. Bush, respected as a knowledgeable, fair, hard-working man, a public servant for 35 years?
No? What about Lieutenant Brian Murphy?
Drawing a blank?
Congratulations. The NRA is counting on you, and you came through for them.
They don't want you to remember that Rachel Scott, the first victim of the Columbine High School killers, was eating lunch on the grass on a beautiful Colorado day in 1999 when her life ended at age 17.
They're glad that you forgot Jessica Ghawi, who barely escaped a mass shooting in a Toronto mall — "I learned how fragile life is Saturday," she wrote afterward — only to die a month later in an Aurora, Colo., movie theater when James Holmes began blasting away last July with his AR15 assault rifle, 12-gauge pump shotgun and at least one .40-caliber Glock handgun.
They don't want you dwelling on John Roll, who stopped by a shopping center in Casas Adobes, Ariz., in 2011 to chat with his congresswoman, Gabrielle Giffords, about the backlog of cases on the federal bench, and was shot dead by Jared Lee Loughner, the deranged gunman who also shot Giffords.
And they certainly don't think you need to bother yourself understanding the story of Lt. Murphy of the Oak Creek, Wis., police, who survived being shot 15 times at point-blank range by white supremacist Wayne Michael Page at a Sikh temple last August.
Grievously injured, Murphy waved rescuers past him to help other victims.
What they're counting on, you see, is that America, numbed by the repetition of senseless gun violence, will continue to have a short memory for such atrocities.
Now, they'd like to use a "Men in Black" memory eraser to get you to forget what happened in Newtown instantly. They fully expect that if they are able to slow down the gun control bandwagon, we will all forget quickly enough. Again.
President Barack Obama knows this. That's why he rushed Joe Biden's gun law task force to finish its work inside a month. That's why he's putting maximal pressure on Congress to act now, while we still remember.
And that's why Sen. Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., says that the Senate will take up gun control in, oh, about six months.
What an ultimately cynical tactic.
Opponents of gun regulation think we'll forget about special education teacher Anne Marie McGowan Murphy, who died with her arms cradling 6-year-old Dylan Hockley at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown.
About teacher Lauren Gabrielle Rousseau, who was in "the best year of her life" after finally winning a full-time teaching job.
About 7-year-old Chase Kowalski, who wanted his two front teeth back for Christmas.
About Charlotte Bacon, 6, who was wearing a brand-new outfit — pink dress and white boots — on that Friday just a month ago.
About Josephine Gay, who had celebrated her seventh birthday six days before.
And about the 20 other children and educators who died in Adam Lanza's horrific Dec. 14 attack on Sandy Hook Elementary.
We need to remember them long enough to get something done about guns in the wrong hands in America.
But the NRA's betting that we'll forget, long before any of the politicians they've been paying is put to the test.
David McCumber writes for Hearst Newspapers. His email address is david.mccumber@hearstdc.com.