For the second day in a row, a high school and the community around it has been ripped apart. Monday in Italy, Texas a 16 year-old boy opened fire on his classmates in the cafeteria, injuring a 15-year old girl. Tuesday in Marshall County, Kentucky a 15 year-old boy shot close to 20 of his classmates and killed two.

This cannot become the new normal for America. We can’t condemn future generations of students to live in a world in which they fear going to school. Schools are supposed to be a safe place where students can go to get an education and prepare themselves for later in life, not a place in which their life comes to a sudden and unfortunate end.

In the wake of the Sandy Hook elementary school shooting, several parents and community members banded together to form the Sandy Hook Promise non-profit dedicated to “prevent the senseless, tragic loss of life.” The organization encouraged people to look for signs that indicate someone might be considering a violent act.

One student from the high school in Italy, Texas detailed the signs that she, and others at her school, reportedly noticed about the suspect leading up to his shooting. This is one of the inherent problems that has both spurned from gun violence and is a contributing cause of gun violence.

Apathy to violence or violent acts, on the parts of classmates, school officials, parents, family members, neighbors, and others is what has led to a culture that does not take action to stop these incidents. Sometimes, practical jokes can allude to a violent act, and while it may not always be a sign of an impending rampage, the simple fact that those jokes are not worrying to the average person is indicative of how this violence has shaped our culture.

This apathy also extends beyond the community where the shooting took place. Washington D.C.’s indifference to the lives of Americans is shocking. Lawmakers even had their own active shooter situation in June when Republicans practicing for the Congressional baseball game came under fire. If that wasn’t incentive enough to solve the gun problem, if the self-preservation instincts in the people who decide our laws wasn’t enough to allow them to empathize with the other Americans who have faced an active shooter, then what will change their minds?

For those that say the current restrictions on guns are enough, the events of the past two days would beg to argue with that claim. Two teenage boys were able to shoot their classmates in a school. That alone completely proves that our current gun regulations are both ineffective and incomplete. Under the current laws, the teens should not even be in possession of a gun, they should not have been able to take it on a school campus, they should not have been in possession of the ammunition needed to wound their classmates, and they should not have been able to take the lives of their peers by using a firearm.

The fact that they could, and they did, only proves that the gun laws in this country are pathetic. If there was a traffic law that held several loopholes that were responsible for countless deaths and injuries, the law would have already been examined and adjusted by now.

But America’s aversion to losing their guns has created a society that values the weapons more than the people they hurt. It’s a terrible way to honor the victims of the constant shootings in America by failing to do anything that ensures nobody else will lose their lives to gun violence.

Schools throughout the world are places of knowledge where children go to learn and prepare themselves for adulthood. But schools in America have fallen prey to the same violence that has befallen America’s concerts, nightclubs, colleges, churches, restaurants, and workplaces. Unfortunately, no matter where one goes, even if it’s a school, gun violence seems to be a daily occurance in today’s America. And that appears unlikely to change until America changes its gun laws.