OPINION: We’re shrugging at political violence. We can’t allow that.

For the second time in as many months, somebody has allegedly launched a plan to kill former President Donald Trump. 
I wanted to take my time to soak in the news coverage before I wrote about the matter, and sadly, my suspicions were confirmed. People don’t seem to think what happened at a Florida golf course, where a man had pointed a rifle at Trump before being arrested, is as big a deal as last time. 
The first assassination attempt in July, when a gunman opened fire at Trump’s reelection rally in Pennsylvania and bloodied his ear, seems to have partially desensitized people to these types of political violence. Part of that is because of how close a call the first attempt was, seemingly only sparing the Republican presidential nominee by a matter of inches. 
But I also think it’s because of how we pay less attention to something the more commonplace it becomes. We must treat every instance of political violence as a wake-up call for America. 
None of this is normal. None of this should be treated as normal.
In the same way school shootings come and go in the news cycle, now attempted assassinations against politicians are becoming less and less shocking. We have for years expected kids to simply get over the reality of school shootings with little change in their security. We’re starting to do the same with politically motivated violence.
Over the past several years, we have had too many instances of political violence, including the attempts on Trump’s life, the attack against Paul Pelosi, Rep. Nancy Pelosi’s husband, the attempt on Supreme Court Justice Brett Kavanaugh’s life and the congressional baseball shooting, among others. Each of these attempted killings had political motives. There is a good chance you’ve already forgotten about them.
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Even excluding these, we have had countless mass shootings. We have had violent riots that plagued our cities, and we have had outright attempts to forcefully disrupt the peaceful transfer of power.
None of this is normal, and the fire fueling these flare-ups of violence has all been stoked by our political leaders to some extent. I believe that the vast majority of our political leaders don’t want violence in their names, but they must be cautious of when their words can be taken to mean such a call to action.
There will always be people who want to do violence, but we can tone down tempers in politics to stop fueling that fire. Politicians have a responsibility not to spark their most violent supporters.
This is in no way to place responsibility on any one party or politician for this rise. Everybody has had a role in it.
However, leaders are meant to lead, and when political tensions get out of control, it is the responsibility of those in power to do what they can to bring them back down. It shouldn’t take somebody getting killed to be a wake-up call, by then it is too late. 
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Whether it be the years of escalation of rhetoric surrounding Trump from the Democrats or Trump’s false claims that Democrats stole an election, it all needs to stop.
So far, that hasn’t happened. Trump didn’t stop his stolen election claims after the U.S. Capitol riots on Jan. 6, 2021. Democrats didn’t stop their brazen smear of the Supreme Court after the attempt on Justice Kavanaugh. Too many times, political violence has been met with acceleration.
I urge our leaders to stop treating the other side winning any given election as the end of democracy. We’ve seen too many times how that only makes the situation worse.
Americans, we need to treat political violence as a big deal every single time it happens. We must make our leaders know that living in such a political climate is not acceptable. No sensible American wants political violence to be the norm.
We have a duty to make it clear that the status quo is not acceptable. 
Dace Potas is an opinion columnist for USA TODAY and a graduate of DePaul University with a degree in political science.