It is interesting to recognize the response and American attention to the Northern Illinois University shootings last Thursday.

Pathetically, Americans across the nation don't even have to turn on the news, go online or read a paper to know or understand the tragedy's aftermath. By now, American citizens can predict the campus memorials, loved ones in tears and eye-witness accounts of the intense event that are the most likely scenes that are being broadcast. Students asking "why" while expressing fear to attend classes in the future are sure to be evident.

While earlier, similar events such as Columbine seemed to shock the nation into silence and confusion, it seems as if these campus shootings have become more normal than such horrific massacres should ever be. Even comparing the extensive coverage of last April's Virginia Tech tragedy to that of the NIU shootings shows a decrease in response from the media and individual communities. Of course, a greater amount of media coverage is not necessary to reflect the depths of destruction, but the difference is telling in that it alludes to a sense of possible acceptance for such events. The shootings continue to happen without warning by troubled victimizers whose surrounding community are just as shocked as their innocent victims and the rest of the country watching.

The greatest problem that could occur as a result of the continuation of these shootings would be that Americans come to accept them as inevitable and unstoppable. Instead of gradually desensitizing the nation, the repetition of these events should be generating an increasingly strong desire for and steps toward actions for a solution.

The five lives that were taken in our neighboring state could frighteningly be any student in the country, and as we witnessed in December at the Westroads Mall in Omaha, Neb., any walking citizen.

Yes, security measures in public places and on campus can be taken to the most extreme extent, but such things as proposed metal detectors in classrooms can only protect individuals to a certain point, and are impractical in many ways.

America struggles with gun control and surprise shootings regularly while the rest of the world carries on without this problem. It may seem that our country is over our heads, but something must change. The solution does not lie in inspecting individuals every time they go out in public and it especially won't occur if we accept the incidents as American norms.