We as a society have become accustomed to death. Either it is the death of a loved one or it’s someone you weren’t close to. This isn’t necessarily the problem, it’s that we are used to the deaths of many people at once. This is by definition, a mass shooting. Columbine, Sandy Hook, Parkland, just to name a few, have all been mass shootings on school campuses. Some victims never even reached leaving elementary school, while others didn’t get to graduate high school. The University of Texas in 1966 and Virginia Tech in 2007 were shootings on college campuses that had victims that didn’t reach college graduation. These are not the only type of mass shooting though.

The Vegas shooting occurred during a concert and the Orlando shooting happened in a nightclub. These are the deadliest mass shootings in our country’s history, and they were supposed to be the wake-up call for our politicians to establish better gun laws. Thus far, we as the UNITED States of America have always stood for liberty and justice for all, yet we can’t justify the deaths of innocent people? Yet, we don’t have the liberty to go to school without the fear of some sort of situation like the ones mentioned happening?

This is why Jacksonville should have been the last straw.

On August 26, 2018, at approximately 1:30 pm, a mass shooting occurred during an eSports tournament for the popular game franchise Madden NFL. The shooter, David Katz, fatally shot 2 people and injured 10 before taking his own life. His motives were unclear at first, but they appeared to be based on his loss of earlier games. He had a history of mental illness as well as prescriptions for anti-psychotic medicine. The victims of this shooting are in the photo.

How could this have been prevented? High Security? Law enforcement presence? To be quite frank, this was something unstoppable. There is one thing in this tragedy that is similar to the Parkland shooting, the fact that a man with a history of mental illness had gotten access to a firearm. Both Nikolas Cruz and David Katz had a history of mental instability. This leads me to a very important and obvious resolution. Tighten up gun control, protest against the NRA as well as the government and put an end to the sale of high powered firearms, right? Well, we have done one of the three things said: we protested.

We can protest all we want, but the reality is we live in a law-driven country where everything that you do must abide by and not break those laws. We have the right to civil disobedience and protests and marches, but the one thing that could change everything is if we had a nation full of politicians with common sense. On the other hand, protests and marches gain national attention, such as the March For Our Lives that occurred in Washington D.C. This shook up our nation and showed us the value of gun control and changing the rules for the better. The one thing we forget is, that we need change, not awareness.

Jacksonville should have been the last straw not because it was a mass shooting, but because we have now had enough awareness and news articles and obituaries for the victims. We need change.