Something's Changed.

In the wake of the (newest) mass shooting in America, this one at an elementary school which killed 20 young schoolchildren (preliminary reports indicating many may have been kindergartners) by a 20-year-old gunman who then shot and killed himself, something feels different after this one.

Although since growing up as a contemporary of the high schoolers who were involved in the Columbine Massacre in 1999, I've generally just had to learn to take shootings in stride, whether at schools, malls, on Congresswomen in grocery story parking lots (which occurred in my town), or in movie cinemas, as of today, I definitely feel like the scales have tipped.  

We have an epidemic on our hands in America. 

I was gone for 3 years traveling abroad, and just since I've been back, within only like 6 months, we have had the horrific Aurora shooting in the cinema in Colorado, the Sikh temple shooting in Wisconsin, the mall shooting in Oregon - just two days ago!!! - and now this one at an elementary school in Connecticut. 

It's obvious that America has had a lot of increasing problems with rampant public and mass shootings over the past few decades - Columbine was the first one that really brought it to the forefront of my knowledge as a teenager, though since then we've also had the Virginia Tech massacre by a student at the university, a sniper in Phoenix - the city where I grew up, and of course the horrible shooting of Gabby Giffords in Tucson in more recent years, plus who knows what other ones have (sad but true) just gone in one ear and out the other as the regular news of the day. But really, another shooting within days of one that just occurred at a busy mall across the country. At least before it was months, even years before news of another big one. Now it's weeks. Now it's days.

So I wonder, what's changing? What's changed?

Are people getting crazier? Are people getting more guns, are they getting them easier? Are they just getting the ideas for guns easier? Are things actually changing or are we just getting increased reporting on every incident with the advent of real-time reporting, no longer relegated to just coverage in the newspaper the next day, or a report on the radio or a spot on TV - but on our Facebook feeds, Twitter timelines, click-to-refresh news media? Are the incidents still the same in volume and severity as it's always been, and just seeming more frequent because of accessibility to and prevalence of the news of it? Or is it really increasing as much as it seems, and getting as scary and unpredictable as it feels. 

Something's changing though, or has changed, since 1999. Of that I'm sure.

But what? And why?