If you have watched the news lately or even just logged onto your email on Yahoo or Comcast, you have heard about the people who were killed in Charleston, South Carolina this past week. This news though atrocious and as horrible as any news one could hear, is no longer the gut-wrenching shock that it used to be. That is a problem. The question is no longer how could this happen instead it has become how could this happen again?

As facts were presented to the general public through the media, it became known that the shooter was our age. There was someone out there, seemingly just another 21 year-old guy, but he was filled with enough hate to kill nine innocent people. The American population should be shocked. The fact that one of our citizens committed such a horrible crime is downright horrible. Even more than the population at large, we as college students and other young adults, should be the most appalled. Here we are given so much opportunity and our peers are wasting it. They are not only ruining their own lives, but the lives of so many others.

If you have followed this story or any of the other mass shootings that have happened as of late, you start to see that this is becoming far too common. It seems that every year the news is filled with faces of new victims, new killers and new tragedies. It seems as though some horrific trend of mass shootings has taken over people. The Boston bombings, the killings at the Batman premiere, Sandy Hook, and now Charleston are just a few instances that have occurred as of late. If you look into these, similar with the most recent tragedy, people no older than us have committed these crimes. Where is the line between us and them? Why is it that most people of all generations seems to hope for peace, equality and safety, but members of our own generation are making names for themselves as mass killers? Is it our technology as everyone thinks? Is it a certain belief that as free citizens we should be able to step on the rights of others somehow? Or is it merely that some people are simply born evil and no matter how they are raised or socialized they will end up doing exactly the same things?

It's no wonder people can’t stand our generation. It's important that young people start to change the news. Rather than creating the headlines of tragedy, it is vital to create headlines of hope. We must take responsibility for what has been happening in our society and begin to make sure that it will not continue to happen.

We look at history claiming that people of other countries and other times must have been just as awful. How could they allow wars? The Holocaust? Genocides? Terrorism? Well it's time to look at ourselves and ask how we could allow these mass crimes. How will we stop them and how can we find a way to change the headlines?