How well I remember when I heard the news of the Columbine massacre on April 20, 1999. It was the evening after my father's funeral. My sister Jan, my mother and myself were reminiscing about the past while enjoying some Chinese take out. Jan received a call from her wife in Denver, where they both reside, informing her of the tragic news. For one moment, she thought she might have to head back a day early to deal with the autopsies of the young victims, being a forensic pathologist at Denver General. Fortunately for her, the shootings in Littleton took place outside of her county. It was a somber end to an already somber day.

When something this horrific occurs, it is almost impossible to process it. No words can properly convey the emotions that generated as we grapple to deal with just how we manage, as a society, to manufacture individuals capable of such senseless acts of brutality. But it's really not my intention to analyze the "hows" and "whys" of what created this situation. I'll leave that to greater minds than my own.

The fact remains that after ten years, the unreal events that took place at that urban High School in Colorado have become all too common place. Sadly, we've become almost desensitized to such mass slaughter -- it just doesn't shock us like it once did. When the news bulletin interrupts our daily dose of televisual diversion, our thoughts might be along the lines of, Man, another lunatic! Then the unnerving feeling that we aren't as gut wrenched as we once were over such carnage begins to gnaw at our insides.

Regardless of all that, when such a tragedy does occur, the inevitable arguments of how to stop lunatics from releasing living beings from the concerns of breathing, heats up. Is the answer "more guns" or "less guns"? The most absurd solution I've encountered is allowing more citizens to carry concealed weapons around. Personally, I can't think of a better scenario for a nightmarish society. It would only serve to create more potential shooting galleries and more dead citizens. No matter how stringent the screening process for gun ownership is made, there will never be any guarantee that any given individual with a firearm won't someday become mentally unsound. And in a society with more people packing heat...well, can anyone really believe we'd reduce gun crime?

You might now be suspecting I'm on the opposite end of this argument, and believe that removing guns from society will make us safer. Not entirely. While I do believe some restrictions are necessary where guns are concerned, I still feel we all have a right to protect our home and property. I'll admit, I'm far more frightened by the "vigilante" solution. Either extreme will probably not produce the desired results. What will? I wish I had the answer to that dilemma.

Perhaps we're back to the "hows" and "whys", again. Maybe I'd better work on my skills of analysis, after all. Sure, it's hard work. But there are no easy answers -- no quick fixes or magic formulas -- to any problem.