Adam Lanza

How could it not? After every one of these school massacres, the latest always seeming more horrific and unthinkable than the last, we vow: Never again.

Peter Lanza’s statement could be read two ways: We are all at risk of losing our own children in such a brutal, senseless and preventable way, no matter how insulated we think we are. Why are we allowing our children to suffer such carnage? Magnify those in a disturbed young mind thousand-fold and we have successive generations of future mass shooters. We have to conquer this. We are the greatest nation in the world, and we are failing our children like no other. But it does have to be understood. Antisocial. Has no sense of belonging to family, to school, to community, and thus retreats online, where rage and veiled threats are unleashed to a like-minded community, reinforcing a sense of victimization and validating the thirst for what these shooters see as vengeance. These should be as commonplace in schools as hearing the same safety drill every single time you board an airplane. Online threats and perseverating over violent actions, especially by young men — these need to be treated as real. They advocate rape, the elimination of women’s rights, and mass shootings. Who among us took one look at those small faces last night and just couldn’t bear to read the details? They’re no longer a bug in our country but a feature.