The first mass shooting that I remember hearing about was the Virginia Tech shooting in 2007. I was only 11 years old, and it didn’t really hit me how horrible of an event it was. I had grown up in a post-9/11 world where the worst terrorist attack in American history was still fresh in everyone’s mind. With my 11-year-old reasoning, I could comprehend that the shooting was sad, but it wasn’t really ‘that bad’ compared to 9/11.

The next mass shooting I vividly remember happening was in 2012 when I was 15. My mom, my friend and I were walking out of the midnight premiere of the movie “Dark Knight Rises.” We were smiling and laughing while donning our batman shirts and masks. It was about 3 a.m. and my mom was scrolling through her phone when she gasped. She told us that there had been a mass shooting at a theater in Aurora, Colorado at a midnight showing of “Dark Knight Rises.” I think that was the first time that I really experienced true fear after hearing about a shooting. Those people were doing exactly what I was doing, they just happened to be at the wrong place, at the wrong time. That random, senseless act could have just as easily happened in Washington.

The Sandy Hook shooting in 2012 was unfathomable for me. I was 16 at the time and I had seen my fair share of violent movies. I had watched teenagers killing teenagers on screen. I had seen adults killing adults. But an adult killing seven-year-olds was something that I just could not wrap my brain around. It made me want to scream. They hadn’t even had a chance to grow up and make mistakes yet. They were innocent. It doesn't matter how old someone is, no one deserves to die. But hearing about children being murdered was the first time I wanted to scream “why isn’t anyone doing anything about this?”

June 2015, a gunman kills nine people in a church in South Carolina after they invited him in to join them. It’s sad and devastating. However, after hearing about first graders being murdered and all of the shootings that followed, it’s hard to be shocked. Nothing is sacred anymore.

June 2016, forty-nine people are killed at a nightclub in Florida. I’m a consistent news viewer by this time and it’s impossible to miss how the news outlets continually flash the number of the people dead and injured on the screen. It's as if the higher the number gets, the bigger a tragedy it is. As if the fact that there was at least one life lost or forever changed wasn’t enough. Within two weeks, the news outlets were no longer talking about Florida. People were done ‘#prayingforOrlando’ and the world felt unchanged.

Monday, October 2, 2017, I woke up stressed about school. I was barely awake when I saw on the news that there had been another mass shooting in Las Vegas. So many dead. So many wounded.

The most disturbing part? I wasn’t even shocked.

A shooting in America isn’t a shocking thing anymore. Horrifying? Yes. Devastating? Yes. Shocking? Not really.

I am just one of the many people who has grown up in a world where mass shootings are normal and terrorists have their faces flashed all over the news screens like celebrities.

Everyone is now living in a time where shootings in the U.S. don’t even make the news unless the body count is high enough. I know that’s a horrible thing to write, but it’s the truth.

I don’t know about anyone else, but I’m tired of growing numb. I’m tired of not being shocked when I see that 60 people have been murdered in cold blood. I’m tired of being numb when I hear about yet another mass shooting or terrorist attack in our country. I’m tired of all of the senators and representatives sending ‘thoughts and prayers’ over Twitter to the victims of these attacks and then not doing anything to prevent another tragedy like this from happening.

I’ve read many comments and posts on social media that say that stricter gun laws couldn’t have prevented this terrorist attack today and they won’t prevent shootings in the future. But I don’t understand why the hell people don’t think that more gun laws are worth a try? Maybe stricter gun control laws won’t help. Maybe there will still be mass shootings. But why would we not at least try to do something to change the violent culture that we live in?

We already know that doing nothing won’t change anything.

Thoughts and prayers and hashtags aren’t going to stop more people from being murdered in the U.S. I know that there will always be people that disagree with the idea of stricter gun control laws in this country. To those people I ask, what other ideas do you have to stop the occurrence of mass shootings in the U.S.? What ideas do you have to change the culture of gun violence we have in our country? I am literally asking because I want to know.

To the people who say that the culture of gun violence in our country will never change no matter what, I would like to direct you to fifty years ago when the Civil Rights Act of 1964 was signed into law and the segregation of black and white citizens was made illegal. Back then, no one could have believed that we would ever live in a world where there had been a black president of the United States. But it happened. So don’t tell me that our culture can’t be changed. Just because you can’t picture it, doesn’t mean it can’t happen.

I know there is no simple solution to this problem. Gun control will always be a divisive issue because of how ingrained it is in our culture. But I think we can all agree that doing nothing isn’t the answer. No one else should die while we watch helplessly from our living rooms. Something has to change. I'm not suggesting that everyone surrender their guns. I'm saying that we need to address the fact that there is a disproportionate amount of gun violence in our country.

We all must come together to find a solution before I have to read another headline that says 'Deadliest Mass Shooting In American History.'