Northern Illinois University was the latest of a number of U.S. schools to fall victim to a… Northern Illinois University was the latest of a number of U.S. schools to fall victim to a tragic shooting yesterday afternoon.

The shooter, a thin white male dressed in black, opened fire in a lecture hall, killing five people and wounding several others before committing suicide.

According to The New York Times, the shooter stepped out from behind a curtain on a stage in a lecture hall and began firing at the students and the teacher, a graduate student.

Months prior to the shooting, NIU faced several threats of violence. University officials closed the campus in December after two separate anonymous messages were found scrawled on a bathroom wall in a residence hall, according to the Washington Post.

The threats alluded to last year’s shootings at Virginia Tech and included racial slurs. When the campus reopened, school officials ordered a police presence around final-exam sites at the university. Clearly, NIU officials exhibited good judgment and consideration in responding to the threats.

But since the tragic events at Columbine High School nearly a decade ago, the massacre at Virginia Tech and school shootings last week at Louisiana Technical College, a high school in Memphis, Tenn. and a high school in Oxnard, Calif., one thing is painfully clear: No matter what actions and steps are taken, such tragedies are impossible to prevent.

Stricter gun-control laws can be passed, school officials can try to improve campus safety, but these responses are incomplete and, in the long run, ineffective. Attention should also be focused on those responsible for the many deaths and the motivations that spur them to kill.

Along with making campuses safer, school officials must address the root of the problem by trying to help those who may be showing signs of potentially brutal behavior.

The truth is that the recent shootings are a sign that a horrific trend seems to be on the rise in the United States. The gun-related homicide rates in the United States are considerably higher than those of other post-industrial countries like Canada, France and Germany, making it all too clear that our nation has been seized by an unsettling and ever-growing culture of violence.

Yesterday, news coverage surrounding the NIU shooting was sparse. CNN’s coverage of the DeKalb press conference last night was quickly followed by an anchorman turning the program over to “Larry King Live,” where presidential nominee John McCain was to appear as a guest.

If anything, this is a sure sign that America has become desensitized to the violence and death reported by the media. Perhaps the media is merely reflecting our desensitization. Are we getting used to hearing and reading about such tragic events? If that’s the case, then these events happen too often.