By DAVE HAMRICK
Editor-at-large

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.

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