I am first and foremost a dad.

And with two children still in school — Selah in fifth grade and Judah in third — I can barely keep myself composed when "news" of another school shooting cracks the airwaves and causes the hairs on my neck to stand at attention.

To say that this shouldn't be happening or to reflexively slap a label on each shooting depending on the level of damage — "unacceptable," "senseless" and "tragic" come to mind — is beginning to ring trite and hopeless.

Somewhere between the politically expedient "Let's Take Away The Guns" tirades and the "Guns Don't Kill; People Kill" broadsides lies an ugly truth: America's schools are no longer a safe haven, a place where you can send your kid off for the day without fear or worry.

Free access to guns makes it that much easier for someone with a chip on his shoulder or a screw loose to inflict massive damage and put a whole school on lockdown.

I don't know enough critical details about the recent string of shootings in Louisiana, Kentucky and Italy, Texas, to assess whether they lend irrefutable evidence to the argument that we need stronger gun laws, as former U.S. Rep. Gabrielle Giffords suggested.

But I can say unequivocally that I share the mounting, maddening frustration of Giffords, who survived an assassination attempt seven years ago in Tucson, Ariz., that left 13 others wounded and six dead.

"Our nation," Giffords said, "has experienced 13 mass shootings already this year, and it's only January. We will never accept these horrific acts of violence as routine."

And yet, routine is what they're beginning to feel like. Anti-gun-violence group Everytown for Gun Safety has counted at least 283 school shootings since 2013.

That is — here I go again — unacceptable.

Senseless.

And, in many cases, tragic — a term that falls short of capturing the heartbreak in rural Kentucky, where a 15-year-old student killed two people and wounded 19 more on Tuesday.

Students and community members hold hands in prayer before classes at Paducah Tilghman High School in Paducah, Ky., on Wednesday. The gathering was held for the victims of the Marshall County High School shooting on Tuesday. (Ryan Hermens / The Paducah Sun)

"This is a wound that will take a long time to heal," Kentucky Gov. Matt Bevin told USA Today. "For some in this community, it will never heal."

What happened in Kentucky is symptomatic of a deeper cultural problem in America. Our nation's gun homicide rate is more than 25 percent higher than the average of other developed countries. That is a perverse sickness that needs to be thoroughly analyzed and thoughtfully addressed.

We owe that to our children, who no longer wonder if something bad can happen but now wonder when and where the next shooting will be.

"Our nation's schools should be some of the safest spaces in our communities," Giffords said. "Why do we keep allowing this terror to happen?"

Again, even if you don't agree with Giffords' insistence on stronger gun laws, you have to find find it harder, day by day, to argue with her portrayal of the violent gun culture that has permeated one of our most cherished institutions — our schools.

Especially if you're a parent or grandparent of school-age children.

"It's horrifying," Giffords said, "that we can no longer call school shootings 'unimaginable' because the reality is they happen with alarming frequency."

Yes, and as a dad, I have a huge problem with that. Even if we don't know what the right thing to do is, we know that we can no longer do nothing. Again.