How do we stop pattern of violence?

Shootings becoming normalized, people calloused as rhetoric grows

Two mass shootings back-to-back after years of tragedies — and still, there is no end on the horizon to the violence in our nation.

First there was the horror of the Las Vegas shootings in October, which left 58 people dead and wounded more than 500.

Now, just a few weeks later, and America is mourning the senseless loss of another 26 people in a mass shooting at First Baptist Church of Sutherland Springs, Texas.

Is this what we want our country to be known for around the world? Home of the free, the brave and the victims of mass shootings?

How many times must we offer our prayers to the victims and their families?

How many shootings does it take before people start to push back and demand action from their lawmakers?

There is no room for rhetoric, campaigning or taking stands based on political party.

There is now an established pattern — a culture where lives apparently no longer matter, and people so calloused to the deaths that they simply offer up prayers (some for the victims, and some for the fact that their families are safe), and we move on.

Our reality is the fact that fewer places are safe anymore. America has proven it over and over again.

A church was once a place of refuge and sanctuary, where those in pain, suffering and need turned in search of solace and comfort.

The Texas shootings are now the latest deaths in a church in recent years, joining a grim list:

• One killed, seven injured at Burnette Chapel Church of Christ in Antioch, Tenn., on Sept. 24, 2017

• Nine killed at Emanuel African Methodist Episcopal Church in Charleston, S.C., on June 17, 2015

• Seven killed at Youth With a Mission and New Life Church in Colorado on Dec. 9, 2007

Movie theaters, stores, concerts, schools, churches — mass shootings have hit all of these areas. Places always thought of as safe have been targets, and those who did the shootings? They look just like AnyMan, U.S.A.

We have a problem, America. And it’s past time we address it.