This time it was a smiling shooter with a handgun.

Monday, March 19, 2001

This time it was a smiling shooter with a handgun. His casualty list: two students killed and 13 other people hurt at a high school outside San Diego.

The psychologizing has, of course, begun, with acquaintances offering answers to the usual questions: What was he really like? Did he have dark interests? How could his family have missed obvious clues?

This yearning to understand a young killer has its uses. But it also leads to false assurances. It allows us to distance ourselves from what happened: We’re relieved that we don’t know anybody quite like this kid.

Read the news reports and you’ll meet several people in Santee, Calif., who used to enjoy that same false assurance. The suspect allegedly had threatened before to shoot someone at the school. "We didn’t think he would do it," one student told a reporter.

Then there’s the parent who says the suspect spent Saturday night at his house – and talked about shooting up his high school. What did the parent do? "I said, ‘I don’t want a Columbine or anything happening around here,"’ the parent said Monday. "And now it has because I didn’t say anything."

We can’t stop every school killer. Never will. What we can do is listen, and act, when a young mind starts its slow spin out of control. Millions of people are listening more carefully than they were before Columbine. Yes, Santee is a reason to redouble those efforts.