On Sunday, Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump was forced to flee as members of his Secret Service team shot a suspected would-be assassin they spotted aiming an assault rifle at the golf course Trump was on. We have reached a tipping point in our society. We cannot protect the most vulnerable among us, our schoolchildren, from shooters, and now we cannot guarantee the safety of the most protected high-ranking officials in and around our government.

It is time to ask ourselves if we are okay with ignoring the root cause of this madness. I for one disagree.

Sunday’s incident was a dire situation, coming just two months after the attempted assassination of Trump at an outdoor rally in Butler, Pennsylvania. The Secret Service’s internal report on its own failings, which led to a young sniper firing eight shots at Trump on July 13, was damning. But for all their obvious failures that day, we have essentially dumped a now nearly impossible task on federal agents and told them to figure it out for themselves. That task—protecting the lives of their protégés in outdoor settings, including in the 31 states where citizens are allowed to carry guns, in a country with 20 million assault rifles—defies logic. Something has to change.

We can talk all day about the need for more technology, drones, cameras, planes, dogs, more Secret Service personnel, and more federal funding for local police support of the Secret Service, but none of it will change the fact that people who should never have a gun are walking around with high-powered weapons. In fact, the Secret Service’s budget has expanded by 55 percent in the past decade, according to the CATO Institute. Those extra dollars don’t seem to have had any impact on the agency’s ability to successfully execute its “Zero Fail” mission. That’s because you can’t just throw money at an unlikely mission and hope it works.

The man arrested Sunday was charged with more than 100 counts by North Carolina police, including possession of a weapon of mass destruction, a fully automatic machine gun, resisting an officer, and hit-and-run. We don’t yet know if this man legally possessed the assault rifle he wielded Sunday, and we don’t know if he has any felonies that would prevent him from purchasing or owning a gun. But ask any responsible gun owner if this man should have a gun, and they’ll tell you, “No.” That’s where we should be focusing: the guns and the people who shouldn’t have them.

The truth is, the Secret Service didn’t fail on Sunday. Agents saw a gun barrel pointed through the brush along the golf course fence. While some agents protected Trump, others fired shots at the suspect. Trump was not injured, and the assailant was eventually captured by Martin County sheriff’s deputies. That’s the problem with too many guns in the hands of too many potential bad guys: Everything can go right and still nearly kill a presidential candidate. That’s why we need bipartisan action on guns now.

And there are things we can do to target the root causes — guns and mental health. Here are three to get you started:

First, double the size and budget of the federal agency responsible for enforcing existing gun laws, the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. The ATF is woefully understaffed and can barely do what we ask of it, including finding stolen guns and arresting people who illegally manufacture guns or parts like ghost guns and fully automatic weapons, tracking guns found at crime scenes, and stopping the flow of illegal guns into the United States. They would have to do all of this, across the country and around the world, with fewer than 3,000 agents and a recent $50 million budget cut.

Second, it is time to defund the Secret Service for all its non-protective duties. The Secret Service investigates financial crimes, including counterfeiting, forgery, theft, credit card fraud, telecommunications fraud, and computer fraud. They also investigate threats to the financial systems of federally insured institutions. These duties are relics of the agency’s history under the Treasury Department. We no longer have the luxury of preserving relics. Those responsibilities could be divided among Homeland Security Investigations, the FBI, and U.S. Postal Inspectors.

Third, we need to significantly reduce the number of assault rifles in this country. Research shows that not only are these weapons favored by mass shooters, but that previous federal bans on such weapons have actually worked to reduce mass shootings. According to Everytown, “A study found that the federal ban on assault rifles and large-capacity magazines was associated with a significant reduction in public mass shootings and related casualties, preventing at least 11 public mass shootings in the 10 years the law was in effect. The researchers also estimated that if the law had remained in effect from 2005 through 2019, it would have prevented 30 mass shootings that resulted in the deaths of 339 people and injuries to 1,139.”

Ironically, Donald Trump promised at the NRA convention in February that if he were re-elected, “nobody would lay a finger on your guns,” and boasted that he had done “nothing” as president to curb gun control. Now Trump has been the target of two attempted assassinations in nearly two months, with both assailants carrying assault weapons. The man who brags about doing next to nothing in the face of horrific mass shootings during his term should realize that it’s time to take action. If he and his party can’t face that reality, I’m sure Vice President Kamala Harris and Governor Tim Walz will be happy to lead the way.