EDUCATION MATTERS:We are indeed our brothers' keepers

In the aftermath of the shootings at Virginia Tech there are, as always, more questions than there are answers. Gun control issues are invariably raised and advocates on both sides will make valid points.

On the one hand, we are all left to wonder what kinds of controls were in place to prevent this disturbed individual from obtaining two semi-automatic pistols. On the other is the realization that guns are attainable in our society by virtually anyone determined to get one.

Many have suggested that if the students who were victimized had been armed themselves, the shooter would have been stopped early in his rampage and lives would have been spared. Their answer to incidents like this is the maintenance of a well-armed citizenry, a reversion of sorts to the gun-toting Wild West that is part of our colorful past.

"If not students, at least let teachers be armed," say some who reason that school shootings could be stopped in their tracks if faculties packed pistols instead of pencils.

As much as the National Rifle Assn. might dream of such a day, it's an absurd notion born in the minds of people who believe that the answer to violence is more violence. We live in a world that is beset with hatred and killing, and that is a hard reality that is reinforced by world leaders and their policies that choose violence as a first, instead of a last, resort. And it is further reinforced by a culture that, rather than teaching peace and understanding to our children, sells them games that simulate the very thing we claim to abhor.

At present, we are seized by the horror of yet another killing spree and left grasping for clues as to what possessed this young man who carried it out. In the weeks ahead we will look back in sorrow and at the same time try to look forward in the hope that we can do something to prevent such tragedies.

It is natural in that pursuit, but not always helpful, that we attempt to construct a personal profile of the shooter in groping to understand his motivation. We try to reconstruct a single life to discover when and how madness overtook it, and are once again left with more questions than answers.