I have delayed reflecting on this issue for a few days so as not to get caught up in the media coverage. We are very fortunate in this country that such occurrences are very seldom and when they do happen remind us of the capabilities of humanity to self-destruction and also to supporting one another. I cannot image the trauma the families of the victims of the shooting and the families of the killer must be going through. All the unanswered questions as to why. I am concerned that the first thing that happens is a knee jerk reaction to demand tougher laws or the question the role of the police as if someone always has to be responsible – there has to be someone to blame. But there are times and circumstances where there is no-one at fault, no one to blame for the circumstances around an event. Tougher gun laws are already in place and this happened, the police were completely in the dark as to what was evolving on that day and were reacting as best they could. Perhaps the deeper question is not how this happened but how we respond to what happened. There will always be times when people react in unpredictable and devastating ways with no warning and seemingly little provocation. But how we as a people and as individual communities react to these events says something about us. Already the media spotlight is moving on to new events and this “story” is being shifted further and further back in the pages of the press. But the people involved have to live with this from now on – it is now a part of their life and existence, part of their story. Events like these create intense media scrutiny but over a year far more people are killed in ones and twos by knives and guns all over the country and it become a 10 minute news item on the day, not even gaining its 15 minutes of fame, but again the people involved have to live with that everyday. How should we respond, not only to the big events like this, but also to the individual cases for how we respond every day says something about the people we are and the communities we will become.