It's nearly

impossible not to grasp at all the easy

"if-onlies" when a tragedy happens like the

shootings in Littleton, Colo. last week.

If only we

could keep guns out of the hands of children...

If only

teachers and school administrators had noticed the

"warning signs" that these kids were

homicidal...

If only

parents would teach their children respect for life...

If only

movies weren't so violent...

If only...

You would

have to be almost as callous as those two killers not to

look for answers, not to search for a combination of

solutions that would make our schools safe.

There's

nothing wrong with that. If there is something we can do

that would at least make such an awful event less likely,

then we shouldn't rest until we find it.

Painful as

it is to realize it, though, there's probably not a

complete solution. Human beings are what we are, and some

of us are garbage.

Some people

have no respect for others' property. Some respect

property but not truth and justice. Some are so depraved

that they have no respect for love or honor.

When you

get to the deepest part of the human gene pool among the

muck and mire, the stench and filth of the worst kinds of

people, you find that there is no respect even for life

itself, and you know you've reached the bottom.

Maybe

someday they'll find the right button, some genetic

defect that can be fixed using lasers or chemicals, to

make all of us good. Is that what we want?

Or would

that remove freedom of choice - the very essence of

what makes us human? We choose to do right or do wrong.

You can't flip someone else's switch.

At least

perhaps science will find a way to identify violent

tendencies early on so we can take the proper

precautions, maybe control the urge to violence with

drugs. Maybe... but I think some people still simply

choose to be scum and killers, with no help from genetics

or improper chemical balance, and no tip-off that we

could identify.

The best we

can hope for is to use whatever science we can muster

- psychiatry, drugs, social engineering, even shock

therapy if it'll work - and reduce the threat as

much as we can.

It's also

easy to believe that someone did something wrong that

caused these two boys to kill. They were outcasts, the

talking heads keep reminding us. Kids in school treated

them cruelly. Maybe their parents were violent, giving

them a bad example to follow, or were cruel to them,

ruining their self esteem.

Millions of

people are treated cruelly, with deep physical and

emotional abuse far worse than being taunted or

disrespected by one's peers in high school. Most don't

respond by killing a dozen innocent people.

Blaming the

guns, the music or the movie industry is so easy. But

tighter gun control laws will never prevent the lawless

from getting their hands on guns. And as much as we would

love to squelch the many movies and songs that glorify

hatred and violence, you can't blame pop culture for

something like this.

If you

examine all the solutions that are being suggested, most

of them involve taking freedom away from the law-abiding

in order to make us all more safe.

There are a

few things we can do to make schools a bit more safe.

Cameras and alarms might help, and we could arm and train

some administrators and resource officers so that at

least the kids would have a fighting chance if violence

breaks out.

Tighter

security in schools? How does a metal detector stop

someone who simply walks into a school building and

starts shooting?

But for the

most part, as I said in this space a few weeks ago, we

have to decide in this nation whether we want freedom or

security.

Nobody said

it was an easy or painless choice.

<!-------------