Last week, America fell victim to a mass shooting yet again as Oxford High School in Township, Michigan, lost four students at the hands of Ethan Crumbley, who allegedly took a gun out of his backpack and opened fire on a crowd of students. Four days prior, Crumbley had posted a picture of the weapon he used to his Instagram with the caption “Just got my new beauty today.” The shooting investigation is ongoing, with both Crumbley and his parents in custody.

The defense has been using the fact that Crumbley was bullied as an excuse or rather justification for his actions. This is absolutely unacceptable and imprudent.

There has been an ongoing trend in our justice system where a white male commits violent atrocities and our officials pity and empathize with him. Kyle Rittenhouse brought an assault weapon to a Black Lives Matter protest and killed two people, wounding another, but cried in court and got off on all charges. Earlier this year, the Atlanta Spa Shootings, in which a white man went into an Asian-owned business and murdered six Asian women, was defended by cops who gave a statement saying the man was “having a bad day.” The consequences of his “bad day” ruined people’s lives.

The media has always liked to pull out “bullying” every time white men commit horrible crimes. Initially, that was cited as the cause of the Columbine shootings before it was uncovered that the perpetrators were white supremacists who premeditated a terrorist attack that had nothing to do with bullying.

The only time a conversation is held on a national level about bullying is as a defense when a white male kills other people and not when it leads minority children to take their own lives. When these crimes are committed, we see the focus shift from the violence and terrorism he chose to inflict to his hurt feelings. No longer is he being held accountable for his actions, but being comforted by the empathy of the ignorant.

I have seen firsthand many of my friends face adversity and oppression at school; none of them brought in an assault rifle and killed four people. Bullying is not what caused this tragedy. America’s embarrassing gun laws are. The fact that through all the massacres our country has suffered, you’d think we’d have implemented some kind of change, but the laws have only gotten more lenient.

I acknowledge that the right to bear arms has always been in our constitution, but at some point, your right to weaponry becomes less important than the lives of innocent children. The ease at which Americans can obtain dangerous assault weapons is terrifying. The gun used in the Oxford High School shooting was purchased by Crumbley’s father at a Black Friday sale, something that seems thoroughly American.

The accountability by fragile, unchecked white men and gun control are two things America needs desperately, because we’re getting to a point where the ignorance of both is lethal. It’s too often of an occurrence to call the Oxford High School shooting a “wake up call,” what it is is a repetitive product of a negligent society and an even more negligent government.