In the wake of the Sandy Hook Elementary school shooting–which left 20 children and six adults dead– there has been heated debates between conservatives and liberals on the issue of gun control and whether or not teachers should have guns in the classroom. 2012 marked a year dominated by highly publicized mass shootings, such as the Aurora, Colorado movie theater shooting, the Oregon mall shooting, and in close proximity to Marquette, the Oak Creek temple and Azana spa shootings. When addressing the Newtown, Conn. community President Barack Obama pledged, “these tragedies must end.”

Since the president’s speech, there have been efforts made in the White House to enforce stricter gun control laws to reduce the risk of mass shootings. But not everyone agrees with the white house. The many that oppose stricter gun control laws argue crime rates in the U.S. are declining, and guns have little to do with homicides at schools. Those on the other side say school shootings are on the rise, and the country has to do everything in its power to keep schools safe. With all of these statistics getting thrown to the public, it is hard to get an understanding of which facts are true and which are false.

One fact that is true: Following the Columbine high school massacre there have been 31 school shootings in America and only 14 school shootings in the rest of the world combined. Of those 31, you may be familiar with the shootings at Virginia Tech, which was the largest mass shooting to ever occur in the United States. Or you may remember the NIU shooting in 2008 that left five students dead and 16 injured. Others include the Cleveland Elementary, Westside Middle School, Oikos University, Red Lake Senior High School, and West Nickel Mines school shootings. Within the past two weeks there were three additional school shootings in Taft, Calif., Hazard, KY. and Houston, Texas.

Of the school shootings listed above, all but two were acted out by a lone gunman. The majority of these gunmen were later recognized as having extreme mental illnesses. However, this does not in any way dismiss their crimes. These school shootings were planned months or maybe even years in advance. These men did their research, and they knew a crisis at the center stage of a small town would have the largest impact and inflict the most pain. The shooters came dressed, fully armed, and prepared to kill in order to make a statement that unfortunately, we will never be able to understand.

Try imagining yourself at school and getting word of a man with a gun on campus. What do you do? You think, “this couldn’t happen here. Not to me.” But it does. It happened to 20 children and six adults in a sleepy town of Connecticut. It happened in rural DeKalb, Illinois. It left scars in the hearts of those at Virginia Tech and is embedded in a memorial near the Columbine high school campus.

Here’s the bigger picture: In 2012 there was over 11,000 gun-related deaths in America. Of those 11,000 deaths, only 37 of them were in schools. But that does not mean the issue can be pushed to the back burner. If our schools, movie theaters, and religious sanctuaries aren’t safe, how will parents ever be at ease putting their children on the bus to school every morning, or dropping them off to watch the latest Hunger Games film on a Friday night? Something has to be done to ensure school shootings don’t become the norm because as of late, each new story on the television seems all too familiar.