On the school shooting
Brian Gongol


We can't call the tragedy in Connecticut today "unimaginable". We've seen it happen before.

Some people think that it's symptomatic of a nation with too many guns. But depraved people have bombs and knives and poisons, too, and some have used them. There was a knife attack in a school in China just today.

Some people think that it's sympotmatic of a nation without enough guns. But it's purely an act of speculation to guess how an armed citizen inside the school might have responded. Sometimes armed citizens fight back successfully. Other times, even trained police officers hit innocent bystanders.

We do know for certain that we have a national (in fact, global) sensationalization problem. Can we really add anything sensible or meaningful to the situation by talking ourselves in circles?

The one thing we do know is that sensationalizing the name of the killer can plant seeds in the minds of other sick people, who go on to create further tragedies. We should not speak the name of the gunman. We should not give fuel to the fire of depravity. It may be all we can do.