The Death of Harvey Milk

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"If a bullet should enter my brain, let that bullet destroy every closet door in the country."

Harvey Milk
Nov. 18, 1977

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Since his murder 35 years ago today, I sometimes wonder if Harvey Milk anticipated the changes that have occurred for homosexuals not only in California, where he became the first openly gay individual to serve on the San Francisco Board of Supervisors, but in the nation as a whole.

A lot of things that were true then are hard for people of the 21st century to comprehend, but at the time of Milk's death, San Francisco did not have the reputation for being a haven for homosexuals that it has today. Many gay people had migrated to San Francisco during and after the counterculture days of the 1960s, but the demographic group really had yet to flex its political muscle.

I'm not homosexual, but I have friends who are, which has made me more sensitive to the gay community's issues and icons than I once was. In 1978, I paid little, if any, attention.

I remember hearing about the slaying at the time, but the victims and the killer were just names to me. I lived two time zones away, and the story didn't really resonate with me beyond the few minutes I heard about it on the evening news.

And, I must admit, from the vantage point of one living in Arkansas and hearing San Francisco mentioned in connection with the story, it was hard to differentiate between that news event and the story that broke a week earlier about mass suicides in Guyana — since many of those who died in Guyana came from San Francisco, as did the congressman who was killed at the same time. I'm sure it was different for people living on the West Coast, but that was kind of a vague reference point for me.

At the time, I suppose I reasoned that the two events were connected in some way. I may even have assumed that Milk's sexuality (if I even knew about it then, and I probably didn't) was the reason for what happened — in San Francisco, anyway.

In fact, there was a connection between Guyana and San Francisco of which I remember hearing nothing at the time. Milk was a big supporter of Jim Jones when Milk was a rising local political star and Jones was a prominent community activist. Reporters might have quoted Milk at the time on what had happened when Jones was in San Francisco, but I honestly don't remember anything like that.

Milk didn't start out in politics. In fact, his political career turned out to be very brief.

As a young man, he served in the Navy during the Korean War and attempted several occupations after his discharge. A native of New York, Milk came to San Francisco when he was 42 and opened a camera shop, but he gravitated to politics and followed a path that eventually made him the first openly gay politician to hold office in California.

In 1978, only a few months before his death and long before Bill Clinton was recognized as "the man from Hope," Milk delivered what has come to be known as his "Hope Speech," urging gays to come out of the closet.

"We are coming out to fight the lies, the myths, the distortions," he said. "We are coming out to tell the truths about gays, for I am tired of the conspiracy of silence, so I'm going to talk about it."

Around the time that Milk was settling in San Francisco, Dan White, a native San Franciscan who had been working in Alaska as a high school security guard, returned to his hometown to work as a police officer. After that, he was in the city fire department.

In 1977, White was elected city supervisor and took office in January 1978 with Milk. I've heard that they had a cordial relationship at first, but things clearly went sour somewhere.

I gather that things began to go irretrievably awry between them over a proposal by the Catholic church to establish a rehab facility for young offenders in White's district. White was against it, and Milk was for it.

But I also gather that White had problems with others in city hall, not just Milk. And, by November 1978, he had reached the end of his rope. He resigned his seat early in the month, citing corruption in city politics and his limited income potential as his reasons. As a city supervisor, he was prohibited from holding a job as a policeman or a fireman at the same time. The law allowed no one to hold two jobs with the city simultaneously.

A few days later, White changed his mind and went to see Mayor George Moscone about being re–appointed to his old job. Moscone was agreeable at first but reversed himself after conferring with Milk and others.

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Then, on this day in 1978, White went to city hall with a gun, climbed in through a window to avoid the metal detectors that had been installed recently and went first to Moscone's office, where he tried once again to get his job back and shot Moscone twice in the head when the mayor refused.

Then White reloaded, went to Milk's office and shot Milk five times, the last two fired at Milk's head at close range. He fled the building.

The task of announcing to the public what had happened fell to future Sen. Dianne Feinstein, then president of the Board of Supervisors, who identified the bodies and was so shaken by what she had seen she needed to be supported by the police chief while she spoke in front of a shocked audience and numerous TV cameras.

That night, tens of thousands gathered for a candlelight march to the steps of city hall. Appropriately, a candlelight march is planned in San Francisco later today to commemorate the Milk and Moscone assassinations.

"[T]he time has come," writes Andy Towle, "to make their vision of a city of hope come alive."

Shooting Blanks

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It's been more than a week since the school shootings in Connecticut, and, until now, I have remained mostly silent on the matter.

I saw enough of the initial coverage to know what had happened, and I've kept up with developments via articles online and in newspapers — so I feel pretty well versed in the basics of the case. I'm sure there are things I don't know, but I guess I know as much as anyone who is roughly 1,400 miles removed from the scene of the crime.

Anyway, if I am channel surfing and I land on a channel that is giving its attention to the shootings, I move on to something else. Doesn't matter who it is — CNN, MSNBC, Fox News or one of the channels my mother liked to call "free world" channels (ABC, CBS, NBC).

It isn't that I don't care. I do care. Very much. Too much, probably.

But I've seen all this before. Virginia Tech. Columbine. Gabrielle Giffords. The theater in Aurora.

It was happening long before that, too. Between the time I enrolled in first grade and the time that I got my bachelor's degree, two presidents were fired upon (one was wounded), two presidential candidates were shot at (one died, one was paralyzed), a civil rights leader was killed, the pope was wounded and a former member of one of the most popular bands in history was killed.

And those were just the best–known victims of violent crime. The number of ordinary Americans — as the ones who died in Connecticut last week were — who were at least wounded by gunfire in that time must be in six digits.

Not much is said when the ordinary Americans are attacked — and that may be the most frustrating thing about all of this, that people are shot every day, but it takes something like a mass shooting or an attack on a prominent person to spark society's outrage.

When that does happen, the same things are said — and usually by the same people (or by people speaking for them or by people who have replaced them in high–profile positions) — and the same suggestions are made.

And, in the end, little or nothing gets done.

Why not?

Well, that is a complicated question.

Let's start with the typical knee–jerk response to ban automatic weapons. On the surface, that makes sense, and I supported that proposal when it was made during the Clinton presidency in the 1990s.

Problem was, it didn't work, mainly because most automatic weapons can be modified to meet legal requirements. Neither do proposals to tighten gun control laws. You see, unless we are prepared to ban private ownership of all guns and repeal the Second Amendment, guns will continue to be owned by law–abiding citizens, the vast majority of whom will never fire their guns at another human being.

The mother of the Connecticut shooter was, by all accounts, a law–abiding citizen. It was her guns, purchased legally, that were used to kill not only her but more than two dozen teachers and students at an elementary school.

That is an horrific crime, understandably repugnant to most of us. And there is an equally understandable desire to do something.

It seems reasonable, therefore, to press for tighter gun control. And it would make sense to propose it — except the gunman did not purchase the guns.

Stricter gun control laws might create more hoops for people like the gunman's mother to jump through to acquire a gun, and that might be emotionally satisfying, but it will never prevent a mentally disturbed friend or relative from taking guns that were legally purchased by someone else and using them the way Adam Lanza did.

Here's another fly in the ointment. I keep hearing all this talk about automatic weapons, which is irrelevant if you really want to talk about laws that can prevent this kind of tragedy from happening again.

The weapons Lanza used were not automatic weapons. They were semi–automatic weapons. I have never owned a gun, but even I know there is a considerable difference between automatic weapons, which are capable of spraying bullets with a single squeeze of the trigger, and semi–automatic weapons, which fire one bullet every time the trigger is pulled.

Most privately owned weapons are semi–automatics — so calls to ban automatic weapons are pointless. That will do nothing about the kind of weapons that were used in Newtown, Conn.

As usual, there have been those who have indicted video games and violent movies and TV programs. Lanza reportedly played a lot of video games, and there is a case to be made, as there has been for a long time, that the entertainment industry, with its ready embrace of violence, bears a certain amount of responsibility for this kind of thing.

But there is no one–size–fits–all solution to the general problem of violence and the specific problem of guns.

This is mostly an exercise in primal group grief. I think there are some people (although they will never admit it, I'm sure) who simply live for the times when they can mourn loudly and openly on their favorite soapbox.

I'm sure they are sincere about their grief — so was I when I was younger and something shocking happened — but I can't help feeling that many are lashing out at something they can't understand.

At the same time, gun rights advocates are put on the defensive. I have known many gun owners in my life, and I'm sure that most of them would never even think of shooting at a bunch of first–graders — nor would most think of shooting at a bunch of theater patrons at a midnight movie — but they are made to feel as guilty as if they had pulled the trigger themselves.

So they feel compelled to make ludicrous counterproposals, like suggesting armed guards in every school — a good old–fashioned concentration camp atmosphere, I suppose, to go along with the traditional instruction in the three R's.

Or the suggestion is made that God needs to be returned to the classroom — as if this sort of thing didn't happen when schoolchildren recited the Lord's Prayer at the beginning of every school day and all we need to do to stop this is to start reciting the Lord's Prayer again.

These are variations on familiar themes, and they point to some unpleasant (and usually ignored) truths that, nevertheless, must be acknowledged.

The central truth is that there is evil — or whatever you choose to call it — in the world. How else can one explain an adult man walking into an elementary school and deliberately shooting at small children?

Because the very thought is so appalling, people assume that the weapons that were used must have been automatic weapons. That, at least, would explain why the victims suffered multiple gunshot wounds. In that scenario, the gunman pulled the trigger once and several bullets were fired at the target.

But the weapons were semi–automatic, and that means that the assailant had to fire at each victim several times on purpose. The medical examiner has confirmed that each victim was shot at least three times.

That is evil. There is no other word for it.

Another truth that needs to be acknowledged is the fact that mental health issues often go untreated in our society, and that needs to change. Inevitably, it seems, mental illness figures prominently in mass shootings.

From what I have read, Lanza was identified as an at–risk youth fairly early on. He came from a reasonably affluent family that was able to provide him with treatment that many families probably could not, and the educators in his life apparently made many efforts to help as well.

Those efforts, however, clearly — and tragically — failed.

There are no easy answers.

The Dead and the Dying

The last couple of days have presented us with ample reminders that those who are not already dead are busy dying.

The most obvious example of the former comes to us from my neck of the woods — yesterday's mass shootings at Fort Hood, Texas. The Killeen Daily Herald today provides eyewitness accounts of the carnage that claimed — by current counts — 13 lives.

Granted, Fort Hood is about a two–hour drive from Dallas, but that's like a stroll in the park, by Texas standards.

A resolution appears to be on the verge of passing the House that will honor those who were killed. Hopefully, the death toll will not rise, but 30 other people were injured and all but two had to be hospitalized. The victims who remain hospitalized today are listed in stable condition so there is reason to believe no one else will die, but complications have been known to occur.

Well, if anything good can be said about those 13 deaths, it would be that they were quick. For the long–term jobless in America, a quick demise would be preferable to the slow agony they are experiencing.

And the agony continues. The Labor Department reported today that unemployment has exceeded 10% in America.

Perhaps in anticipation of that development, perhaps in reaction to Tuesday's elections, Congress approved an extension of unemployment benefits that Barack Obama was scheduled to sign into law today.

I have to admit that the timing seems suspect to me. Hundreds of thousands of Americans have been losing their benefits in the last several months, while the Democrats have been obsessing over health care reform. Then Democrats lose two governorships — and a couple of days later, the Democrats in Congress approve a benefits extension.

Paul Krugman writes, in the New York Times, that "economic policy is starting to look like [Obama's] Anzio" because he was too cautious in his approach.

This benefit extension may seem like a bold move to some. And, as one of the long–term unemployed, I appreciate these crumbs that Obama and the Democrats in Congress are tossing to us. But I feel that they are treating a symptom when it is a disease that is killing us.

The Latest From New York

Details are emerging today about Jiverly Wong, the 41–year–old gunman from Vietnam who killed 13 people and seriously injured more than two dozen others at an immigrant services center in Binghamton, N.Y., yesterday.

Apparently, his actions didn't surprise many of the people who knew him. He may have been despondent about his employment situation — apparently, his last job was terminated in November when the plant closed. He appears to have kept to himself on the job (the textbook loner, perhaps?), but he seems to have done his job well.

There are also reports that — at one time, anyway — he had a cocaine habit. Perhaps his autopsy will yield information that can tell us whether he was under its influence yesterday. And I've heard reports of a "minor" brush with the law.

He seems to have struggled with the language, and he seems to have been taunted for it (shades of Columbine?). But he apparently had made an effort to address that deficiency at the center.

"People close to Wong told police they weren't surprised that the man turned to violence," reports the Binghamton Press & Sun-Bulletin. "People had made fun of Wong due to his difficulty speaking English, leading him to feel 'degraded,' his loved ones told police."

The Press & Sun-Bulletin editorializes about the anguish the city is experiencing. "There is so much unknown at this point, and it will take time to gather and fit together all the pieces — and even then the picture may never be complete."

The thing that seems to be consistent about these mass shootings is that there are always people — friends or relatives — who always say — after the fact — they aren't surprised that the perpetrator snapped.

When the perpetrators have been combat veterans, it seems that someone inevitably will say something like, "He just wasn't the same when he came home from the service."

These days, it seems that unemployment is a connecting thread — but not always and it doesn't seem to manifest itself in the same way. Wong's rampage ended with his suicide, but his victims may all have been strangers to him; none, at the moment, appear to be friends or relatives. In the vast majority of the mass killings involving unemployed people that I'm aware of, the perpetrator killed the other members of the family, then killed himself.

His family's lives may have been spared, but many of Wong's survivors do not seem to be surprised by his actions. They all seem able to cite incidents in the past that were red flags foreshadowing a tragedy.

And all I can think is, "Wouldn't that have been a good time to tell someone?" I'm not talking about those things that are a little iffy or could go either way. I'm talking about clear episodes of poor anger management or depression.

I guess that is what really frustrates me about these situations. It's the same problem I have with people who will say, after a major event, that it was foretold in the prophecies of Nostradamus.

Nostradamus, as you may know, has been credited with predicting both world wars, several major assassinations and other important events in the last 450 years. It was also alleged, for awhile, that Nostradamus' quatrains mentioned September 11.

It is said that Nostradamus was deliberately ambiguous to avoid detection by the authorities of the day. But there are people who are experts on his writings, and they will tell you, conclusively, that not only did Nostradamus predict, among other things, the Revolutionary War and presidential assassinations but recent events as well in his quatrains.

Now, I don't expect a man who lived in the 16th century to provide details about events three or four centuries before they happened. But if it is so easy to connect the dots, why didn't anybody mention it before it happened?

And if this man was a threat to himself and others, why didn't those closest to him alert the authorities?

Perhaps they did — and perhaps that is something we will learn in the days to come.

But if they didn't ... why didn't they?

And if they did alert the authorities ... why didn't they listen?

The News From New York

After the beating the stock market took on Monday, I didn't see how it would be possible for stocks to rebound and post a gain for the week.

Then, the stock market posted gains the rest of the week. But I still doubted there would be overall gains for a fourth straight week when the jobs report came out today, and joblessness went up to 8.5%. Surely, I thought, this will have ramifications on Wall Street.

Nevertheless, stocks rallied and finished in positive territory for the fourth straight week. I suppose, if I happened to be an economist, I might understand why this happened. But I don't.

"For the four–week period ended Friday, the Dow has gained almost 21%, according to early tallies," writes Alexandra Twin for CNN.com, "making it the blue–chip indicator's best four–week run since May 1933, when it gained 31%."

Of course, I suppose one can argue that, in May 1933, there was literally nowhere for stocks to go but up.

But there is other news — troubling news — from New York tonight. An as–yet unidentified shooter and a dozen other people are dead in Binghamton, a relatively small community about 150 miles northwest of New York City, following a shooting rampage in an immigration services center. More than two dozen people are confirmed injured.

This event is likely to be in the news for several days, at least, as investigators sift through evidence and details emerge about the shooter and his state of mind, but, whatever the facts turn out to be, it's a sobering reminder of how brief life can be.

The Search for Closure Continues

As another day has come and gone since the shootings at Northern Illinois University, the victims, their families, the school, the community and the nation wrestle with questions and continue to look for answers they may never find.

And the vigils continue as well.

The Richmond (Va.) Times Dispatch reported this morning that Virginia Tech was going to hold a candlelight vigil for the NIU shooting victims tonight. The newspaper pointed out the special poignance that last week's shooting holds for those at Virginia Tech, who lived through the bloodiest campus attack in the nation's history last spring.

Answers seemed to come more readily for those at Virginia Tech, though. At least, when a little time had passed, Virginia Tech could see the red flags that were out there before the shooting started.

When you can see the red flags, you know what needs to be corrected.

At this point, it's still hard to spot the red flags that must have been there in the NIU shootings case.

Is it that we can't see them, or is it that we won't see them?

There are still some pieces missing from the puzzle. We'll be in a better position to assess everything when we know what Steven Kazmierczak's diagnosis was and what his doctor had prescribed for it.

But not having the information we need leads to a general feeling of frustration and helplessness.

"[I]t's still frustrating" to have no answers, writes Dawn Turner Trice in the Chicago Tribune.

"Can we build a fence that's tall enough or install metal detectors that are sensitive enough?" she asks. "Can we strengthen gun laws so that they're error-proof or find surefire ways to identify those so mentally deranged they'd harm themselves and innocent bystanders?

"We probably can't. There always will be that one person who slips through the greatest of security nets."

We need more details before we can say whether Kazmierczak slipped through the cracks.

"And yet, that doesn't mean we stop trying to close all the gaps."

It's only human nature, I suppose, to want to find answers to unanswerable questions.

Because we always believe there is an answer to be found. We just have to look long enough and hard enough.

Looking For Answers

Today is the third day since the shooting rampage at Northern Illinois University.

Victims and relatives of victims are flailing about in search of answers to the complex questions of "Why?" and "How can it be prevented in the future?" reports the Chicago Tribune.

"I'm mad," the father of one of the wounded told the Chicago Tribune. "There's a lot of anger, and there's nothing you can do about it. I wish you could go somewhere and get rid of that kind of anger."

Politicians have built careers around assuring voters that there are simple answers to complex questions. Because that is what most people want to believe -- if you're faced with a bad situation, it can be corrected with a simple answer.

It's a tempting notion, of course. If one is overweight, one wants to take a magic pill that will make the excess pounds melt away without requiring the person to eat bland foods and exercise for weeks, months, or even years. If one smokes or drinks or uses drugs excessively, one wants an easy solution that spares the addict the pain of withdrawal and the pangs of desire for the substance.

Sadly, that's not the way the world is. It would be nice if there were easy answers to the complex questions that confront us. But there aren't.

At NIU, the victims, their families and friends are trying to come to grips with a terrible situation and trying to find a simple, one-size-fits-all solution. But they will find -- as others before them have found -- that it's a long, torturous road back to normalcy.

If normalcy can be achieved.

And that road is different for everyone. The twists and turns are different. The obstacles are different. The challenges are different.

Do you recall the fire five years ago in a Rhode Island nightclub? A has-been 1980s band called Great White was performing when a pyrotechnics display got out of hand and turned the club into an inferno, killing and maiming hundreds of patrons, mostly blue-collar types.

An article in today's New York Times reminds readers that many of the victims live with the scars of that night to this day. Some of the scars are visible, some run deeper and cannot be seen with the naked eye.

But long after the public attention to their plight faded away, the victims have continued to seek normalcy. And to seek answers to why it happened.

"Reason has its limits; there are no constructions or formulas that would reshape the universe," writes the Tribune's John Kass today. "No matter how hard we try to puzzle things out, the act of figuring gives no control over life."

There is much truth to be found in Kass' words.

There is a seemingly random quality to life that can lead one to all sorts of fruitless questions. There were well over 100 people in the NIU auditorium when Steven Kazmierczak opened fire on Thursday. He killed about a half dozen people and wounded about a dozen more. Why did so many people, including people who were seated near the victims, escape the carnage with not so much as a scratch?

It was the randomness of life.

In my own life, that randomness often has made its presence known.

Nearly 13 years ago, for example, my parents were out having dinner with friends when an extremely intense storm front moved through the Dallas-Fort Worth area.

My parents and their friends tried to get to their homes in spite of the weather. The storm caused severe damage to property and claimed the lives of about two dozen people. My parents' friends were spared. My parents were trapped by the storm about a mile from their home. My father was seriously injured. My mother was killed.

I often wrestled with the question of why my mother died that night. In the end, I've had to accept that it was simply the randomness of life.

Four years before that, a good friend of mine was diagnosed with cancer and died a few months later. He died about a month before what would have been his 30th birthday. And when I was in third grade, a classmate of mine died of leukemia. In both cases, I wondered frequently why my friends had to die so young.

Again, I had to accept that it was the randomness of life.

No doubt those on board the ill-fated ocean liner Titanic who survived its sinking in 1912 wondered why it happened, why so many people died when so many lifeboats were not filled to capacity. Perhaps they carried those questions with them to their graves.

In the aftermath of something as terrifying as Thursday's NIU shootings, perhaps all that can be done is to, in the words of the old song, accentuate the positive.

That father to whom I referred earlier told the DeKalb (Ill.) Daily Chronicle that he didn't know "where the anger comes from in a person that young."

His wife told the newspaper that their daughter has been overwhelmed by the response she has received. "[S]he didn't realize how many friends she had or how many people cared about her. She was surprised.”

But if that family "can't understand the anger that tears people apart," wrote the reporter for the Daily Chronicle, "at least they can appreciate the love that pulls them together."

Let's hope that love sustains them in the days ahead.

What Can Be Done About Campus Shootings?

A few days before Wisconsin voters go to the polls, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel reports that both Hillary Clinton and Barack Obama are calling for common-sense changes in gun laws in the wake of Thursday's shootings at Northern Illinois University.

Given the proximity of the NIU campus to Wisconsin, it's not surprising, really, that the subject of gun laws should come up on the campaign trail.

But I have to wonder, what was the violation of the unwritten rules of common sense? If we can identify that, maybe we can do something to improve the situation and make it less likely that something like the NIU campus shootings happens again.

But what could have been done?

The gunman apparently had a valid state-required firearm ID card. That meant that he could purchase guns legally -- as it appears that he did -- in the days before the shootings.

It's possible, under some existing laws in some jurisdictions, to prevent a person from purchasing a firearm if that person has exhibited unstable behavior, making him/her a threat to himself/herself and others.

Did the gunman, Steven Kazmierczak, exhibit such behavior?

Further details may emerge in the days to come, but right now, all I've heard is that he stopped taking whatever medication he was on in the days leading up to the tragedy. Based on the very limited information I've heard, I can only assume he had been diagnosed with some sort of mental disorder -- perhaps he'd been diagnosed as bipolar -- and had been taking some sort of prescribed medication to deal with it.

University police say that people close to Kazmierczak say he became "somewhat erratic" after he stopped taking the medication in recent weeks. But we have no other information about this "erratic" behavior. Was he physically threatening other people?

Until we get more details, there's no way to know if the medication was what prevented Kazmierczak from committing acts of violence in the past.

And if it was, how can we pass -- and enforce -- laws requiring people to take their prescription drugs?

I think it's fair to say we can deduce, in this case, that at least one person in the medical community believed that taking a certain medication would be beneficial to a certain patient. But actually taking the medication is still a matter of individual freedom and choice. If we're going to pass laws that require dispatching officers to make sure the patient takes the medication, doesn't that put society in a hornet's nest of privacy issues?

From the details that have emerged, there were no advance warnings to indicate that beneath a seemingly calm exterior there was a simmering cauldron on the verge of exploding.

It's not unusual for friends and family members, in the aftermath of such an horrific event, to express shock that the perpetrator would do such a thing. I have often observed, to my friends and family, that, within a few hours of a mass shooting, TV reporters can be expected to be airing footage of shocked colleagues and relatives, all saying, "He was always such a good boy."

If my memory serves me correctly, that's what Ted Bundy's mother said when he was arrested.

This case is no different, really. But what is different is how many people are saying it about Kazmierczak.

The graduate student seemed to have had no problems with students or faculty.

"I found Steven to be a very committed student, extremely respectful of me as an instructor and adviser," his adviser at the University of Illinois said.

Kazmierczak "was an awarded student. He was someone that was revered by the faculty and staff and students alike," the campus police chief said.

He seemed to have no problems with his landlord. The man says his former tenant "always paid on time, never a noise problem, left the place spotless."

A criminal justice student, Kazmierczak seemed to have had no problems with police. The only previous run-in with the law that has been uncovered was a speeding ticket in an accident on a snowy day in December 2006. There were no injuries, and Kazmierczak paid a $75 fine.

In the aftermath of the shootings, police have said he was "a fairly normal, unstressed person" who had no known motive for what he did and left behind no notes explaining his actions.

From the information we have in this case, what would Obama and Clinton suggest that would make society safer and protect the rights of gun owners at the same time?

The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel quotes Obama, who represents Illinois in the U.S. Senate, as saying that America needs to "get a handle on all the violence that's been taking place and ... do a more effective job of enforcing our gun laws, strengthening our background check system, being able to trace guns that are used in violent crimes ... (and) close the gun show loopholes."

Perhaps Obama should have taken the opportunity to speak out against gang violence and spousal abuse as well. Those subjects have virtually the same relevance to the NIU case.

I agree, violence is out of control in this country. But how were gun laws not enforced in the Northern Illinois University shootings case? What is the weakness in the background check system? How can we trace guns better? And how, for that matter, would that have prevented the NIU shootings from occurring?

And how did "gun show loopholes" get inserted into the discussion?

I remember that such loopholes were factors that contributed to the Columbine shootings in 1999. But I've heard no evidence that suggests Kazmierczak ever attended a gun show. And, if he did, there's no evidence that the weapons he used were purchased at a gun show.

Clinton was similarly obsessed with issues that had no connection with the reality of the NIU shootings.

"I do support lifting the prohibitions on local law enforcement being able to track guns to gun dealers who have a record of selling guns without appropriate oversight. ... I do support closing the gun show loophole. I support reinstating the assault-weapons ban," she said.

As I understand it, Kazmierczak brought a shotgun and three handguns with him. No assault weapons.

I agree that assault weapons should be banned. Permanently. But they simply have no bearing on this case.

Both candidates affirmed their support of the Second Amendment and the right of citizens to own guns.

"I believe strongly people have the right to own and bear arms under the Second Amendment," Clinton said. "And I also believe we can reconcile our constitutional rights with common-sense measures that will keep guns out of the hands of criminals, terrorists and people with mental health problems."

Based on the information available, Kazmierczak was not a criminal. He was not a terrorist. The report that he had stopped taking whatever medication he'd been prescribed implies the possibility of "mental health problems" but doesn't confirm that -- yet.

The concerns that both candidates raised are important and need to be addressed. But they don't appear to be relevant to this case.

In other shootings, like the Columbine shootings, there are obvious issues that need to be addressed -- like the gun show loopholes.

And, in the case of the Virginia Tech shootings last spring, the perpetrator had a history of run-ins with the law and mental health issues.

But the NIU case is bewildering because none of that appears to be a problem. So we struggle with the question: What could have been done to prevent this?

Both campuses are gun-free zones. But how can campus police, which are notoriously understaffed and underequipped, adequately enforce that with campus populations of 25,000 (the approximate enrollment of NIU) or 27,000 (the approximate enrollment of Virginia Tech)? Or more?

Is the answer to build brick walls around every campus and install metal detectors at every entrance? That could be pretty expensive -- especially with talk about building walls along our country's northern and southern borders to keep the terrorists out.

With the federal government already spending billions of dollars on the war in Iraq and contemplating spending who knows how much on border walls and increased patrols, campuses large and small could not count on much, if any, financial help from outside their home states. And most states are struggling to meet their obligations as it is.

Or should we reverse the gun-free zone policy? Do we want students and professors coming to class armed? Is that conducive to the kind of learning atmosphere college campuses are supposed to provide?

By the way, the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel endorsed Obama today. Its editorial made no mention of the NIU shootings -- or either candidate's reaction.