I hesitate to add anything to this thread, the songs I would have suggested are at the begining, and last night adding anything seemed almost like an intrusion.

To the Colorado student, your reaction is natural, the feeling of helplessness in any situation you cannot control is numbing. To try and fail is bad enough, but to be unable to do anything can at times be unbearable. I hope that knowing the rest of the world shares your feelings may help.

Some have talked of blame, and it is a natural reaction to want to blame someone, or something, for in attributing blame one can in some ways make the unbelievable more understandable. For others, the attribution of blame to individuals absolves them, at least in their own minds, from any complicity, yet as Barry has said, if we do not take responsibility for what happens around us, how can we blame others. We all do our best for our children, but we are also responsible collectively for the social environment in which they grow.

At the end of the day our children make their own choices, but we are responsible for the choices they select from. If we as a community give primacy to individual "rights", including the right to own firearms, over the responsibility of the individual to their community, can we really deny culpability if they take this precept to an extreme which shocks us?

DW's method may not work for all, but it does seem to me to be a recognition that responsibilies come before rights, as does Barry's stand.

Pete M