Orlando. You hear about travesties like this and can’t help but wonder, what has our world come to? The sad thing is that hearing about atrocities like last Sunday’s mass shooting at Pulse,a gay nightclub in Orlando, is becoming increasingly common.

49 lives were lost. 49 unique, beautiful human beings with communities of friends and loved ones, all of whom are, at this moment, going through the worst pain they’ve ever felt.

It was just a innocent, carefree night out at the club. Dancing, drinks, a fun time with friends. That’s all. Did these people know that, upon entering the club, they would never emerge to see the light of day? They didn’t get a chance to say goodbye. They didn’t get a chance to live their lives to its entirety. It’s not fair. It just isn’t.

To think that 49 lives were lost today at the hands of a single man-- a man with a gun, a distorted worldview, and a diehard passion to live by what he stood for-- is absolutely absurd. Especially because atrocities such as these are so preventable. What of gun control? What of humanity?

The Colorado movie theater shooting in 2012.

The Sandy Hook elementary school shooting in 2014.

The UCLA murder-suicide earlier this month.

And now, this. The worst case of mass shooting in the history of this nation.

We all give our condolences to the grieving families, communities, people of Orlando. But they are just words. Come next week, this shooting will be old news. The living move on. It’s in the past. Forget it. Let’s move on with our own lives, our own problems.

But can’t we see that today’s shooting, as well as its predecessors, is everybody’s problem? It affects all of us equally. No one is safe. More importantly, though, this shooting calls into question the very essence and value of humanity. What has this world come to? The violence, atrocity, death-- Man pitted against man, brother against brother. It is absurd. Unspeakable. This world is filled with dangerous people with distorted belief systems. So we must switch the conversation from why do such atrocities happen, to how they can be prevented. We know why-- there are crazy people out there. But when we give crazy people the power and means to inflict evil, then is the aftermath-- shootings, violence, atrocity-- really that surprising?

Too many times history has repeated itself. You would think that the American people are smart enough to make a change. Why is it taking so long for the people to understand that gun control is adamant, and the first step towards eliminating such horrible travesties? Why isn’t something being done?

Today’s mass shooting is the tipping point, the last straw. If the people of this nation continue to turn a blind eye to horrors like these, then I don’t know what this nation stands for anymore.