It’s become a routine: Shots fired. Students and teachers take cover. Police arrive. Dazed students, hands raised, evacuate. Shooter neutralized. News conference held. Officers are praised for their response. Victims identified. Makeshift shrines erected. Politicians declare that now is not the moment to talk about guns, and instead raise “thoughts and prayers” for the victims and their families.

Meanwhile, the clock keeps ticking on youth violence.

It happened again Wednesday morning at Apalachee High School in Winder, Ga. Two students and two teachers were killed, with nine others — eight students and one teacher — left to recover from injuries. Questions remain, such as how 14-year-old suspect Colt Gray, an Apalachee student who is facing four counts of felony murder, got his hands on the AR-15-style weapon reportedly used in the shooting. His father, Colin Gray, has been charged with four counts of involuntary manslaughter, two counts of second-degree murder and eight counts of cruelty to children.

What did Colin Gray do, or fail to do, that helped bring about this mass shooting? What were the shooter’s motives? And the larger question extending beyond the Winder community to the American people writ large: Considering what guns are doing to our youths, how dare we stand by and do nothing?

My bucket list includes organizing more than three decades of column-writing for The Washington Post. Since 2001, many of those columns have been devoted to guns, many specifically about children as victims and shooters. One stark conclusion: Our children — boys and girls from grade school to high school; in public or parochial education; in cities, suburbs or rural communities; with Black, White and Brown skin — are linked by a common reality.

Guns.

How long has this been going on?

A March 9, 2001, column referred to a Handgun Control Inc. report showing that in 1997, D.C. lost 58 children and youths ages 10 to 19 to homicide. Virginia lost 66, and Maryland, 88. That’s murder, not suicide or other shooting incidents.

And the young homicide victims of 1997 in D.C., Maryland and Virginia were joined by more than 2,000 others slain nationwide in 1998.

It has ever been thus. Every day, 23 young people are shot in this country, according to the Brady organization. Gun violence is not an anomaly, whether in Winder, Ga., or Washington, D.C.

And kids with guns — their readiness, disposition and desire to use them — send a message that America is in a different place today.

Time was, differences and disputes between children were settled by means that didn’t end in emergency rooms or mortuaries.

Have we lost our minds? Why do we make it so easy for children to kill?

Presumably Colin Gray is confronted with that question today.

I am a registered gun owner. Decades ago, while engaged in military and civilian endeavors, I was trained to use firearms (rifle, .38-caliber pistol, .357 magnum) in the line of duty. I recall the awesome, destructive power of those weapons. I also recall the weight of the weapons, and feelings of empowerment and — this is on me — the immature, macho-inspired itchiness to show off, though I never wanted to actually shoot anybody. Guns, by their nature, test the holder’s maturity, discipline and responsibility. Children have no business with them.

In a statement on social media about the Apalachee High shooting, Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump said: “These cherished children were taken from us far too soon by a sick and deranged monster.” Is 14-year-old Colt Gray cruel, wicked and twisted inside?

Annie Brown, who is an aunt of the suspect, told The Post some of the backstory, which may help explain — not excuse — the alleged violence. Her nephew had been “begging for months” for mental health help, she said. His struggles were exacerbated by a troubled home life. The family was no stranger to the local child services department, she said.

Stories like this have been heard before, and they are not tired stereotypes. Children with mental illness exist. They attend school burdened with personality disorders. Some are raised in fractured families, where a child’s illness is not recognized, let alone treated. Monsters?

Twenty-three years ago, I wrote: “Let’s do something about it.”

My pleas? Tackle abusive home and school environments. Look for warning signs of a troubled student, and get the child help. Beef up school physical security where necessary. Hold gun owners responsible when children get hold of unsecured weapons. “But above all else, let’s close off access to the means to produce schoolhouse killers.”

Democratic presidential nominee Kamala Harris, at a campaign stop in New Hampshire, said of the shooting at Apalachee High, “This is just a senseless tragedy on top of so many senseless tragedies. … We have to end this epidemic of gun violence in our country once and for all. You know, it doesn’t have to be this way.”

Republican vice-presidential nominee JD Vance said he laments that school shootings are “a fact of life” and that the country needs to harden security in schools.

America, we can do better than that. Break the routine travel of young gunfire victims to morgue slabs.

That deadly cycle can be broken. Provided that after all these blood-filled years, the will is still there. The means are at our disposal.