The carnage is awful. I cannot deny that the weapons of choice made it worse.

No one else can deny that there might still have been deaths, though fewer, without the weapons. No one else can deny that there might have been more if the VT killer had chosen explosives. He was certainly deliberative enough in his planning to have done so if he had wished. One can manufacture explosives from common enough materials.

What no one can deny is that deadly violence was the form of conflict resolution both of these people used. The violence is what must end. We can choose to limit killing by limiting access to guns, and congratulate ourselves when people are fatally stabbed or incinerated or bludgeoned that at least they weren't shot.

Now: The first three times and the last three times I fired a gun, I hit the target I aimed at. Every time I've ever shot a gun, I've hit the target, and I have no doubt that I would do so again. I have a steady hand and wonderful distance vision. My glasses, at the age of 52, only correct for close work. I didn't care for it, though. It's too loud, and the recoil wrenches my arm. No one forces me to shoot anyway, even though I live in an area where many people do. The people who would forbid them, however, are people who don't shoot. They can't imagine any benefits; therefore, there must be none.

When my oldest daughter decided to take up the rifle, she told me how relaxing it was, and I believed her. She told me how one has to step outside one's self to see the bull's eye and center the sights each time. She said it's like a kind of meditation. She applied that to other aspects of her life, at that time and now, learning to find the quiet spot in her mind in all the noise and tumult around her.

When my next oldest daughter took up the rifle, she did so because she worshipped her sister. They are remarkably dissimilar. The younger girl found it difficult to remain still for any length of time, or to concentrate. After a year of effort, in which she shot miserably, she learned the discipline it took to calm her body. She learned to shake off disappointment upon missing a shot and to refocus on the next target immediately. She learned poise.

When my youngest daughter, my youngest child, took up the rifle, she derived something completely different from it. She had always had poise, and had no need to summon quiet because she is a very social girl who thrives on the noise of people. What she learned is the value of hard work and practice. Friends and academic achievement come easily to her. Becoming an accurate shot is difficult. She practiced because she wanted to conquer it and to excel. She has learned the value of persistence and the pride of personal accomplishment.

My daughters have made good friends and have been coached by adults who have modelled patience and courtesy, responsibility, and concern for their safety. Although most of the coaches are men, the girls, mine and the other girls on the teams, have never been subject to the kind of sexism girls can encounter when competing directly with boys. Everyone is coached according to his or her strengths and weaknesses, as individuals.

The people who hunt remove the threat of crop destruction from the local farms. They reduce the number of hosts for deer ticks, thus reducing the incidence of Lyme disease, which cripples. They destroy smaller animals such as rabbits and groundhogs when they become pests. They supply soup kitchens and shelters with venison so that the indigent and the unlucky can have meat with their supper.

When people become upset at gun possession because of the horrors we have seen over the past week, they only think of the ones who have used guns to act out their violent desires. They never think of the others.