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Valentine's Day 2018 arrived uneventful in Worland, Wyoming, but while I was writing a story on WESTI Ag Days and laying out the paper, a young man made a decision to go and kill 17 people and wound many more at a high school in Florida.

I've written about school shootings in the past and as this one weighed on my mind, I thought is there anything I can write that will make a difference? Is there anything anyone can do that will make a difference?

I have to believe that yes, there is something that can be done, otherwise all hope is lost. I have to have hope that somehow, some way our society can turn things around.

You see, I don't believe school shootings, or other mass shootings, are the fault of the Republicans, or the fault of the Democrats, or the fault of the president, or the fault of the National Rifle Association.

Will more gun laws or stricter gun control help? I believe there is the possibility that the Las Vegas shooting could have been prevented if current laws had been followed (i.e., the military filing the proper reports). Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but unfortunately, we'll never know if the gunman would have still been able to get his hands on that many weapons and that much ammunition.

So will more gun control prevent the next tragedy? Perhaps, but perhaps not. We truly don't know.

The one thing I know for certain is that the only person to blame, or rather the only one ultimately responsible for what happened in Florida, is the shooter.

We live in a society where people do not accept blame for their actions, they do not consider the consequences of their actions and they do not care how their actions impact other people. I am not saying all people are this way, what I am saying is I think this is where we've gone wrong in our society. When I was growing up, people had guns, there were not gun-free zones at schools, there were not school shootings, or mass shootings at concerts or theaters. It's not the guns that have changed since then, it is society and people who have changed.

That is what we must address.

I remember when a quadruple murder occurred in 1990 in Thermopolis. It rocked the community. My mother was still working at Ralph Witters Elementary School and I asked her how the elementary students were handling the tragedy. She said something that has stuck with me and I think is a symptom of the problem. She said they seem to be doing OK because they really don't understand what death is, they don't understand the finality of death.

Our youth then and now play violent video games where you can shoot people and you just start the game over, everyone you just shot comes back to life and you do it all over again. Even paintball games where you can shoot people with paintballs but people get up and everything is fine.

In real life, when you shoot people with real ammunition, they don't get up. Everything is not fine.

Even violence in movies makes things seem more fantasy than reality.

I'm not saying to blame the video game or movie industry, but I think they play a part in numbing our senses to violence and death.

So how do we change society and how do we change the heart of humanity? It must start with you and me.

1 Corinthians 13:13 (NIV) states, "And now these three remain: faith, hope and love. But the greatest of these is love."

Unfortunately, you can't legislate faith, hope or love. You can legislate against hate speech and actions that result from hate but you can't legislate hate. You can't make people stop being angry. You can't make them stop hating.

You also can't legislate kindness. You can't legislate faith. You can't legislate hope. You can't legislate love.

And, unfortunately, even if you could legislate these things, our Congress is too dysfunctional to actually get anything meaningful accomplished.

So where does that leave us? Again it comes back to you and me.

In Michal Jackson's "Man In the Mirror," the chorus states, "If you want to make the world a better place, Take a look at yourself, and then make a change."

Jesus says in Matthew 7:3-5 (NIV), "Why do you look at the speck of sawdust in your brother's eye and pay no attention to the plank in your own eye? How can you say to your brother, 'Let me take the speck out of your eye,' when all the time there is a plank in your own eye? You hypocrite, first take the plank out of your own eye, and then you will see clearly to remove the speck from your brother's eye."

You can't help others find faith, hope and love without first finding it in yourself.

And, thus we have come full circle. It really does start with you and me. Do we take responsibility for our actions? Do we show faith, hope and love to others? Or do we show hatred and anger?

You and I can be a model to the person next to us, then they can, in turn, be a model to the person next to them, and so on, and so on, until we change society's attitude and the heart of humanity, one person at a time.

I believe it can happen. It has to happen. I may not have hope in Congress or gun laws. I do have hope in humanity. I have in hope in you and me.