It's been almost 20 years since two teenagers, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, shot and killed 13 students and faculty at Columbine High School in Colorado before taking their own lives. Their actions sparked a nationwide debate about gun violence as well as the media’s role in the massacre.

Today, the news headlines aren’t so different. If anything, they have gotten worse. In 1999, Columbine was something that was almost unheard of in the news cycle. No one knew how to react because they weren’t prepared.

In 2018, reading about a mass shooting, whether it’s at a nightclub (Orlando), a movie theater (Aurora), a concert (Las Vegas), a college campus (Virginia Tech) or a public school (Newtown, Parkland), it’s easy to grow numb. It has become an every day occurrence in our society.

That is precisely what the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting survivors in Parkland, Florida are trying to change.

In less than a week, the students have organized a walk-out at the high school on March 14, the one-month anniversary of the shooting. On March 24, they will march on the streets of Washington to further express their anger and frustration in what they have called the "March For Our Lives.” Similar marches are being planned via social media around the country, following a similar trajectory the inaugural Women’s March did last year.

If that wasn’t enough to keep people talking about the epidemic, students in Hartford, Connecticut, not far from where Adam Lanza conducted the Sandy Hook Elementary School shooting in 2012, are planning a nationwide school walk-out on the 19^th anniversary of the Columbine High School shooting on April 20.

It’s easy to shrug all this off and continue to lose faith, even after reading all of this. It’s much easier to sit back and say that none of this will change any laws and that there will be another shooting in a month or so and that the cycle will continue.

Perhaps that’s true. Perhaps none of this will change anything. Real change doesn’t happen overnight. It takes months, years and sometimes decades before we start to see real progress.

There are many reasons that Parkland is such a unique circumstance in the midst of all the mass shootings America has had since Columbine. The students who survived the shooting have only known a world that is overrun with violence.

This makes the survivors question why that is. Why are their friends and teachers continuing to die, nearly twenty years after a high school shooting that should have led the initial movement to send a wake-up call to Congress?

These students are grieving. They’re hurting. They want their friends and loved ones back. Most of all, they’re angry. They’re upset that they don’t feel safe in their community or their school, which is supposed to be one of the safest places to send your children.

If children as young as six years old have to go to school every day with the risk of being shot to death, then what kind of society are we living in? It’s times like these where we must ask ourselves what kind of country we want to be. Is this really the best we can do?

One of the biggest impacts Parkland has had is the fact that social media is so prevalent in our society compared to when Columbine happened. Viral videos documented eye-witness accounts of students huddling under desks to avoid gunshots. Others captured SWAT teams, essentially converting their high school into a battlefield.

When people can actually see what’s going on rather than reading about it, it creates more of an impact. It makes people care more. It makes them feel something. That is the biggest difference with this school shooting. More people are feeling emotions that weren’t felt the same with Vegas. Or Orlando. Or Newtown.

More people are waking up and refusing to accept that this is the way it is. More people want real change.

Whether you have faith in these teenagers or you believe that this movement will simply fizzle out like others have in the past, you have to consider that this shooting is unique. The way people are reacting is different. An opportunity is present and the Parkland survivors aren’t wasting a second of it.

You can be sure I’ll be present at one of the many marches planned across the country on March 24 and I hope the rest of you take part as well. You can also sign a petition here supporting the scheduled school walk-outs on April 20.

If we want change, it begins with us. We are the last hope for a better future. Only we can make America great.