As I'm sure everyone is aware of by now, on Sunday, November 5, a gunman walked into the First Baptist Church in Sutherland Springs, Texas, and proceeded to open fire on worshippers. The gunman, whose name I will not be using for this article, ended up killing 26 people and injuring another 20. Once again, we as a nation are forced to deal with another mass shooting, and once again, there has been an outpouring of support to those affected by the tragedy, but I have not been moved by this shooting as much as everyone else apparently has.

Don't get me wrong, I understand the plight of the victims and their families, but there comes a point when you have dealt with things of this sort so many times that they become commonplace, and that visceral, gut-wrenching reaction that you used to experience is replaced by a sense of what can only be described as apathy. When people begin to reach a point such as this, and events such as this begin to occur on a more regular basis, we lose the privilege of calling them tragedies and are forced to address it by its true name.

This is simply the world we live in now.

If you are alarmed by that, then you may be a part of an ever-shrinking minority. However, you may try to debunk this claim by pointing out all of the love and support being given to the victims and their families on social media. To this point, I say that words are just words, and they mean nothing if we do not act to make sure something like this does not happen again. As the saying goes, actions speak louder than words, and this is far from the first time that we have remained silent in this regard.

We all know the drill by now; a shooting occurs, many Americans call for gun control, many other Americans cling to their rifles as if they were their first-born children, the debate about gun legislation intensifies for a period of one or two weeks, and the tragic loss of life fades into obscurity as the 24-hour news cycle finds something new to be outraged about. We then forget all about it, at least until the next shooting inevitably happens, and the cycle begins all over again, like the most terrible caterpillar ever. The world we live in is not defined by what people say on Twitter, but the actions that people take to change our world, and to say that action is sorely lacking would be a monumental understatement.

It seems to me that if no action is going to be taken and we continue to experience tragedy after tragedy, then we have to stop treating them like tragedies.

Through our reluctance to take a stand of any kind on this issue, we as a nation have collectively decided that this is the kind of country that we are okay with living in; the kind of country where ten to twenty innocent people get mowed down by some jerk with a gun every two weeks or so, and apparently nobody gives enough of a shit to do anything about it. I said it earlier, and I will say it again now: your words, your thoughts, and your prayers mean nothing. Your actions are the only thing that matter when it comes to mass shootings, and I am now convinced, more than at any other point in my life, that action will never be taken to address this violence. If that really is the case, and America decides to carry on as it always has, then we as a country should be appalled by the indifference we have allowed to fester in our society like an open wound, and we have lost the right to be shocked and shaken by events such as this.

I am done riding the emotional roller coaster that comes with every mass shooting, and I am just live in the reality of the situation. One day, after the next eighty mass shootings come and go with no reform, I look forward to all of you joining me.