What does it take?

The front section of today's San Francisco Chronicle had a full page of articles about American violence. None of the articles were editorials - they were all news stories:

1. "Gunman was long at odds with City Hall" - about the man who killed 5 people and injured a 6th at a City Council meeting in Kirkwood, Missouri, on Thursday
2. "Student kills 2 in class, and herself" - a 23-year-old woman walked into a class at a vocational college in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, then left, and then returned and shot two of her classmates on Friday
3. "Man stabbed wife, then girlfriend" - in Portsmouth, Ohio, a man who had been ordered to stay at least 100 yards from his wife, who was filing for divorce, entered her place of work and stabbed her, fled, then attacked his new girlfriend a few blocks away
4. "Man gets life for killing wife, shooting divorce judge" - reporting on the sentence handed down on a man in Reno, Nevada, who has admitted that he killed his estranged wife and shot the judge who handled their divorce.

The page also had three advertisements. There were no other news stories.

There are so many daily reports of this type of violence, so many stories about the sadness and loss experienced by the families and friends of the victims, so many questions raised about the punishments inflicted on the perpetrators - and yet similar stories continue to appear, and similar acts continue to occur.

What does it take for someone to realize that taking an innocent bystander's life is a horrible thing? That killing someone with whom you have a difference of opinion is not the way to solve that difference?

How do we, as a society, change this phenomenon?