The fundamental problem is the definition of "we" throughout your response.

"We" is now code for "the government" or anybody else we can get to take the problem off our own hands, to soothe our guilt and uneasiness by convincing ourselves that Something Is Being Done.

Too many people harbor the deep and dangerous delusion that if we just give the State enough raw, bloody power over our lives, nothing bad will happen to anyone any more.

History tells us how well this works.

I can't help somebody in Kansas by driving him to a counseling center. I can help somebody here. My son volunteers at the local food bank in our town. We do a lot of local assistance through our church, like donating to a local shelter program for the working poor (I've cooked a meal or two for them - an incentive to get your own kitchen if anything is), or backpacks full of school supplies for local kids who don't have them. Money to the Salvation Army goes where it's needed, on a local level. I'm no paragon of charity. I do some things, and not others. But every neighborhood in the country has things like this. So does yours. And some things are better than nothing.

That's where you start in a free society. The best and most effective things are done locally. Charity. Education. Almost everything.

One of my favorite stories is the one where a man comes to a beach after a storm. The beach is covered with thousands of dying starfish, thrown onto the shore by storm waves as far as the man can see. Walking down the beach nearby is a small boy. The boy picks up one of the many starfish, and throws it back into the safety of the sea. Then another, and another.

The man walks up to the boy. "Son, why are you doing that? There are thousands of starfish here, and you can't save them all. Why do you bother? What you're doing doesn't make any difference!"

The boy looks up at him, holding a dying starfish, and then he throws it into the sea.

"It makes a difference to that one," he says.