The act of mourning is indeed a process, and in itself a cycle. We have in the recent past experienced this with the tragic shootings in Tucson, Arizona. Six people were killed, 14 wounded. Among the wounded is Congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in the head and is remarkably still alive. As incredibly horrible and disturbing as these shootings were, are we surprised? Though the specific situation of the shooting couldn’t necessarily have been predicted or prevented, the nature and the act itself could have been.

Let’s go back to Columbine High School, Colorado, April 20 (“coincidentally” Hitler’s birthday), 1999. Two seniors, Eric Harris and Dylan Klebold, went on a shooting rampage, killing twelve students and one teacher before taking their own lives. Harris ran a blog that frequently mentioned the mischief in which both he and Klebold were involved. Numerous death threats were posted towards a particular classmate, and eventually violent threats towards students and staff at Columbine High School were discovered on the blog. The police looked into the blog well before the shootings, and a request for an affidavit was filed but a search warrant was never granted.

To top that off, both of the boys were arrested roughly a year before the shootings because they had been caught stealing various tools and equipment. Shortly before this, directions on how to make a pipe-bomb were posted on the blog, and Harris admitted to having explosives in his possession. And, in case your jaw hasn’t dropped far enough, these directions were accompanied by a hit list of individuals, whom he targeted as “enemies.”

A senior in high school was able to obtain explosives, and so the problem boils down to this: there was obvious proof of some sort of psychological problem. It was later concluded by the FBI’s team of psychiatrists and psychologists that Harris was a clinical psychopath and Klebold was depressive. As a society, how do we begin to deal with this?

Through Columbine, Virginia Tech, and now, generally speaking,  the shootings in Arizona, we have formed a cycle of grieving. As a nation, we go through some sort of shock, mourn the victims, blame someone, ponder the possibilities of prevention, and go back to the apathy of our day-to-day lives while waiting, subconsciously, for another tragedy to strike. This process amounts to nothing. We are human—what else can we do?

The Virginia Tech Massacre of 2007 is, to this day, one of the deadliest shootings by a single gunman in United States history. Thirty-two people were killed and several others wounded. The shooter was Seung-Hui Cho, an English major at Virginia Tech University.

Cho exhibited emotionally disturbing behavior from a young age. Cho’s family said he was unusually shy and barely spoke. According to Cho’s grandfather, he rarely made eye contact with others.In high school, Cho mentioned in a paper that he wanted to “repeat Columbine” and wrote on one of his school binders “F*** you all, I hope you burn in Hell.” At Virginia Tech, Cho was removed from a poetry class because of his unnerving behavior. He photographed women’s legs under tables and wrote violent poetry. His professor, Nikki Giovanni, said she would rather retire than continue to work with him.

Jared Lee Loughner, the shooter from the Arizona shootings, had behavioral problems at school, including suspension. He also posted disturbing videos on his YouTube account, and posted a photo of a United States History book with a handgun on top of it on his Myspace. His philosophy professor from Pima Community College described Loughner as someone whose “brains were scrambled,” and “mentally checked out.”Differing from Columbine, there were no conventional or specific warning signs exhibited by Loughner, though it was incredibly apparent he was mentally disturbed.

School shootings have become a mostly American phenomenon, perhaps because of our lax gun laws. In Arizona, for instance, firearms can be legally purchased and concealed by anyone 21-years of age and older. Furthermore, no permit is required to carry a concealed weapon. This means that someone like Loughner can simply walk into the appropriate stores, pass a not-so-thorough background check, and purchase a firearm. Loughner purchased a Glock-19 semiautomatic weapon from a Sportsman’s Warehouse, which he allegedly used in the shootings.

An analysis of data done by the Washington Post and provided by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives explores Arizona’s role in gun exporting. In 2009, 1,637 guns that were initially purchased in Arizona were found at crime scenes across the country. This means that for every 100,000 state inhabitants, 25 guns were exported from Arizona.

Similar school-related shootings have occurred in Germany, Finland, and Scotland, the most recent of which took place in 2009, in Winnenden, Germany. So, not purely an American trend, but the most tragic shootings have occurred within the United States. Stricter gun laws, anyone?

It comes down to this: these people were mentally disturbed and they had access to firearms.The purpose of this is not to blame anyone. There is absolutely no use in going back and pointing fingers and shouting should haves and could haves. However, this pattern of mentally disturbed people violently acting out needs to end. These warning signs must be warning signs, not indicators we see only in retrospect. We as a society need to, not necessarily expect but recognize that there is, and always will be, a possibility for shootings to occur.

Now, that possibility could certainly be lowered if more money was designated to gun control. It’s baffling that so much time and money is spent by hard core Republicans to support their “pro-life”stance on abortion, for example, but lack of gun control promotes the opposite view. If laws are indeed going to allow us to conceal weapons, they could at least have provisions keeping guns out of the wrong hands.

There are actually databases that contain the names of people who can’t own guns for various reasons, mental instability included. These databases, however, aren’t well-funded and therefore aren’t updated as often as they should be. If states could obtain proper funding to manage these databases, it wouldn’t be so difficult to prevent mentally unstable people from buying firearms.

To prevent such horrific events from happening, we need to keep our guards up, so to speak. Don’t suppress your concerns about an uneasy classmate, coworker, or friend. If you think you’re reading too much into an unsettling remark made by a classmate, you may not be. Picking and choosing your battles is a balancing act, and it’s hard to know what to take seriously and what to let go.

It may seem unlikely that talking to a teacher about a concerning classmate or to a boss about an unsettling coworker could prevent something like a school shooting. These are the chances you must take, and I think we can all agree that seeming far-fetched in the present is preferable to being sorry in the future.