This is America. Land of the free, home of world-leading gun violence. I was perusing the news after the long weekend and came across the headline that 16 people died during the holiday weekend, with dozens more injured. I immediately thought in my head, “Hey, not that bad.” I had to stop myself and think about what a ridiculous thought this is. We’ve all become unbelievably desensitized to this level of violence that we can just casually scroll through the news without giving too much thought to all this violence.

This isn’t the America we deserve. I’m not sure we’ll ever learn our lesson and put more restrictions on gun ownership. I can hope. But alas, I think we’ll just be living this life of guns, death, and half-hearted mourning on repeat for the rest of our lives.