Some 1,600 miles separate Natchez from Las Vegas. On Sunday, shots rang out all over Natchez, with police receiving approximately five emergency calls reporting gunfire.

Sadly, one person was killed on early Sunday morning. Police were still working Monday to piece together what happened and why.

Monday, on the other side of the country, Las Vegas police were doing the same thing after a gunman peppered a crowd of concertgoers with gunfire, killing dozens and injuring hundreds.

The violence in America is everywhere, from major metropolitan areas such as Las Vegas to relatively rural areas like our community.

The bullets are real and the horrendous pain the shooters leave is real as well.

Sadly, such violence — in large groups such as in the Las Vegas shooting or in individual murders such as the Natchez shooting — are so commonplace that the news of the events have lost their sting.

Our collective hearts, it seems, have become hardened by the violence of yesterday to the point at which we barely bat an eye at the bloodshed of the day.

In the wake of such events — whether the work of a psychopath who planned a mass murder on a national scale or a street thug seeking revenge on a rival — we often seek to understand why such killings occur.

It’s because our world is increasingly filled with evil and hatred. Until enough law-abiding citizens realize this and work together to return our nation to its respectful past, things will only get worse.