On Sunday night, I was in my dorm room having a conversation with some friends when my phone dinged, alerting me of an active shooter situation on the Las Vegas strip. After a brief freak out over my friend's family member who's in Vegas on vacation right now, we all quickly returned to our normal state of mind and resumed our conversation, almost entirely unfazed by the news we had just received.

I woke up on Monday morning to news of "deadliest mass shooting" and all I could think was: "oh no, not again" before I hurried out the door to make it to my class on time.

Dozens of lives lost, hundreds of people fighting through life-threatening injuries, an entire nation affected and the little blip on my screen affected me about as much as if I'd gotten a notification that someone had liked my tweet. And I so wish that it hadn't.

I wish that my heart was breaking for Las Vegas. I wish that I was so distressed at this senseless massacre that I'd be sparked to do something, to create some social change, to prevent the next Newtown, Columbine, Pulse, Aurora Theater, and now, Vegas.

Instead, I feel an overwhelming sense of hopelessness. I cannot make sense of a world in which people have enough hatred or even apathy to cause this much senseless harm to innocent people.

I'm angry that we have systems in place that make it possible for something like this to occur.

I'm disappointed that nobody saw this coming.

I'm thankful for law enforcement and first responders who contained the situation and prevented more damage.

Mass shootings have become so commonplace in America that I (and many others, I'm sure), have found ourselves unable to respond adequately to the news that yet another place has been defiled by senseless violence and inexplicable disregard for other people's lives.

I want to be saddened and heartbroken and to say that I don't understand how these sorts of things can happen but instead we all resort to dismissing these horrific tragedies as common and unpreventable instead of addressing the systems that are in place that create a toxic breeding ground for senseless violence.

When did it become so American to embrace horrible acts of terror as inevitable every time we step outside of our homes?

When did we become okay with young children needing to learn how to cower in a classroom in case a psychopath with a machine gun decides to enter the building?

Why is the normalizing of mass tragedy the price we're willing to pay for people to own a gun? The second amendment wasn't written for people to own weapons of mass destruction and the side of the political aisle with which you identify should not cloud your judgment so much that you could reasonably argue in favor of people dying in mass shootings.

There is no logical reason why someone should be able to acquire such deadly weapons and cause such significant harm to this many people. Nobody needs a semi-automatic rifle to defend themselves or to go on hunting trips. These weapons serve no logical purpose apart from these horrific crimes that have become so trademark of our country that we hardly bat an eye.

Gun control may not be the answer to how we can prevent these horrible things happening in the future and, even if it is, it's not one that our country will ever peacefully agree on.

When did this become a political issue instead of a "people should be able to go to a concert without dying" issue?

But we live in a world where we're all affected by the terrors of mass shootings, where we know that every time we go to the movies or to school or to a concert, there's a chance that we won't come home.

It's time to do something.

There's no reason why mass shootings should be the norm in our country. Nobody should live in fear of leaving their homes and nobody should have the power to cause this much harm. This is not normal. It's not acceptable. And we can't stand by complacently while we wait around for the next "largest mass shooting" notification to pop up on our screens.

To help victims of the Las Vegas shooting, consider donating blood or donating money directly on GoFundMe