Jesse Lewis, six years old, yelled for his classmates to run moments before being gunned down in the Newtown, Connecticut shooting last year. Dylan Hockley loved the movie Shrek, and died in the arms of his Special Education teacher, Anne Marie Murphy. Charlotte Bacon was part of a Girl Scout troop with nine other girls, only five of whom survived the 2012 shooting, according to the Washington Post.

Unfortunately, the Newtown shooting was one of many in 2012, and even more occurred in 2013. With shootings becoming common news, people often only ask for the basic details nowadays, whether that is the death toll, what kind of weapon was used, or where the shooting happened. People, especially those under the age of twenty, are used to shootings. What many teenagers do not realize, however, is that before Columbine and Virginia Tech, mass shootings, especially school shootings, were almost unheard of.

        As of November 19, 316 mass shootings have occurred in the United States. That is a mass shooting nearly every day. A mass shooting is defined as a shooting where four or more people are shot and wounded, not including the shooter, in a single spree, according to an article on the Huffington Post online.

In the past few years, there has been a large increase in mass shootings. They have become so frequent that the first question out of people’s mouths are “how many people died?” and often times if that number is lower than five or ten victims, people are relieved. Yes, Americans are jaded, but only as a result of the tragedies we see on a daily basis.

The only way to stop these too frequent and horrific occurrences is to be more concerned as a nation and do something about it, rather than leaving the fight to one individual or group. There is no way we are going to be able to stop, or even decrease, shootings without working together. . In the last seven years alone, over 900 people have died in mass killings, and that does not include the deaths of those in shootings where less than four people died.

Regardless of political party, personal beliefs, or any other differences we may have, there is no way to justify standing by while the body count continues to rise

We can debate over gun control, or security in schools, or mental health care from the safety of our own homes. We can shake our heads at the TV when yet another reform is shot down by Congress, blame the government for our plight and forget all about the issue until the next time somebody dies. But none of these passive reactions will fix our country.  How long can we wait, and how many people will we let die before we realize that this, this is on us, and we, as a country, need to take responsibility for finding a way to fix the problem.

There is no one problem or one solution to focus on, but as a nation we must come together to tackle gun control, and mental health care, and school safety, and any other issue we come across that could help put a stop to school shootings. The people of the United States have always come together in times of crisis, and we must do so again before more lives are lost needlessly.