I'm sure everyone has heard about the school shooting that took place in Georgia this week.

For several reasons, this one hits me differently than previous events. Yes, they're all horrible, but this was so preventable. While obviously, the majority of my sympathy goes toward the victims, I can't help but see the boy who did the shooting, Colt Gray, as a victim too.

Maybe some of my opinions today will be unpopular, or maybe you feel the same.

From the information that is coming out, everyone possible had failed Colt. There are stories of him being abused by his parents, being locked out all night by his addict mother, being terribly mistreated by his mom and dad, and watching them behave violently toward each other.

Neighbors repeatedly called Child Protective Services. CPS did nothing to protect him. He and his siblings were never removed from that unstable home.

His aunt reports he had "begged" for mental health help for years and only just finally got to start seeing a school counselor.

His school attendance was sporadic. His father reports he was bullied, and the kids said he was gay. So far, there's no real evidence that he was or was not gay.

Authorities visited him after the FBI got a credible tip that he was making school shooting threats online nearly two years ago. His father got him a gun for Christmas AFTER this visit from authorities. Why on earth would he have given his son the tools to carry this out when he had been warned?

On the day of the shooting, Colt had met with the counselor and made "disturbing" comments about school shootings. Yet he was allowed to go to class anyway. He had called and apologized to his mother, who frantically called the school and warned them of an "extreme emergency" situation. He still was not pulled from class.

So many mistakes were made. There were so many chances for someone - anyone - to step in before this tragedy occurred.

It didn't have to happen. I feel like Colt was a victim long before he ever made victims of his own.

What he did was incredibly wrong, and it cannot be undone. He took innocent lives. But I don't think trying him as an adult and putting a 14-year-old boy who was previously abused in with a bunch of hardened criminals is the answer. I don't have the answers.

I hope that if anything comes from this, it is that more attention is paid to these warning signs and that more intercessions occur before it gets to this point.

We talk about mental health problems being the issue instead of guns, but why aren't we addressing those problems? Why are we letting kids fall through the cracks of an imperfect system?

This shooting could have been stopped a dozen times before it started, right up to the very same day.

My heart goes out to everyone involved - the kids who lost their innocence watching a violent crime, the families of those who lost their lives, the people fighting for their lives in the hospital, and even Colt Gray, who nobody listened to when he cried out for help.

Repeatedly.

For years.

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