Are Americans so self-righteous we no longer consider the greater good?

"We're not going to fix it," Rep. Tim Burchett, R-Tenn., said following the shooting at The Covenant School in Nashville that killed six people, including three children. "Criminals will be criminals," he said.

He may as well have said, "Meh."

A student was shot at my daughter's high school when she was a freshman. It took place between classes and my daughter was close enough to hear the gunshots and to be trampled by students running and screaming, scrambling to safety. Teachers leaned out of classrooms urging children to get inside and take cover as they tried to secure a frantic hallway filled with terrified students.

When shots begin to pop off, no one knows what's about to unfold. Is it the beginning of a mass shooting? Is it a kid who brought a gun to school and it's accidentally gone off? Or is it somewhere in between? Who is about to die?

My daughter texted me from her locked-down classroom giving me the play-by-play while police went classroom-by-classroom with guns drawn and pointed, looking for the shooter. Kids marched out single file with their hands on their heads.

Was I terrified? Yes. I clung to my phone waiting for her updates from the inside.

The incident made me wonder if I was gambling with my kid's life every time I sent her to school. But in reality, it wasn't any more of a gamble than letting her walk out the front door. Guns are everywhere. Shootings can happen anywhere, and they do.

It was (thankfully) not a mass shooting. But that doesn't take away the terror of the moment and the absolute understanding that it could have been. One child was hospitalized with gunshot wounds. That in itself is a horrific reality.

Our story is no longer an anomaly. It's the American way.

Sending a child to school shouldn't feel like you're sending them into a potential war zone. But hearing news reports of students being shot in what is supposed to be the safest place in our community, parents cannot help but have bullets on their brains. It's only a matter of time before we see another school turn into a statistic.

America is theoretically a free country, but I've always understood that my freedom ends where someone else's begins. I do not get to tread on others' rights in the name of my freedom. I used to have faith that it would be gun enthusiasts who would be expected to yield in the name of keeping children safe — like the Federal Assault Weapons Ban of 1993. But here we are, with that act having long expired, yielding to gun rights activists time and time again, sacrificing lives and running active shooter drills in the name of freedom and Second Amendment rights.

We live in a society where we should behave with an understanding that we have a responsibility to the greater good. We are only as strong as our weakest link, and one of our weakest links right now is the capacity for people to use military weapons for civilian carnage.

Have we forgotten about the greater good? Or have we become so self-righteous and have tipped the logic so far that we no longer consider the collective when understanding what it means to be free?

All I know is, "We're not going to fix it."