School massacres, aberrations of gruesome violence which are becoming less aberrant in US high schools, usually trigger a week of moral exploration among the media in the US. How could this happen? And how could it happen here?
Here usually means a peaceful school campus in a sleepy suburb. These explosions of evil do not usually occur in urban areas. Columbine High School, in Littleton, Colorado, the site of the latest student shooting, fits the bill.
A community of 35,000 people just outside Denver, Littleton boasts all the benefits for families seeking to escape the big city. It is a middle-class area and there is no school overcrowding.
It is attractively situated between two well kept parks. In 1992, voters provided the school with $13.4 million to remodel and expand. Some 85 per cent of graduates go to college.
So how is it possible that for some time now the school has knowingly played host to a collection of students calling themselves the "Trench Coat Mafia", teenage boys clad in trench coats, affecting a predilection for militia gadgetry and expressing a love of guns? That is not really the question. The question is why someone didn't realise something was wrong?
There is a wide range of youth behaviour in the US which might be immediately termed psychopathic or disturbed elsewhere but is accepted in the US as merely rebellious. All too often, such behaviour has tragic consequences for the parents and communities.
Since October 1997, there have been eight violent school shootings in the US. The names of the places have been branded in the country's memory - Pearl, Mississippi in October 1997; Paducah, Kentucky, in December 1997; Jonesboro, Arkansas, in March 1998; Springfield, Oregon, in May 1998.
The list goes on. But in those four places along, just five boys murdered 15 people and wounded 44 others. Who were these boys?
Kipland Kinkel, the 15-year-old boy in Oregon, alleged killed his parents the night before he opened fire at his school. According to police, he chatted on the phone with a friend while standing beside his father's corpse, waiting for his mother to come home.
When she did, according to police, he said: "I love you, Mom," then shot her. He then sat with his parents' bodies, watched an episode of South Park and went to school in the morning for some more killing. (Two students were killed and 20 injured) On an Internet profile he posted before the rampage, Kipland said he enjoyed "heavy metal music, violent cartoons and TV, and sugared cereal".
In Paducah, Kentucky, Michael Carneal (14) had no such interests. Just 5'0", he was often bullied and said no one respected him. Michael began to make threats to other students but nobody listened. On Thanksgiving Day in 1997, he stole two shotguns, two semi-automatic rifles, a pistol, and 700 rounds of ammunitions from a neighbour's garage.
"I had guns, I brought them to school. I showed them to them, and they were still ignoring me," Michael said later. He opened fire.
Anger at being ignored is a common symptom of adolescent, probably a necessary and usual part of growing up. Access to guns and semi-automatic weapons is not. The campaign to make guns inaccessible, however, is met with fierce opposition.
The most powerful pro-gun lobby is the National Rifle Association. In September 1997, the NRA launched a campaign to target US youth to encourage them to press for gun rights. That month's cover of the NRA magazine featured its president, actor Charlton Heston, surrounded by children, with the question: "Are Gun Rights Lost On Our Kids?"
Mere access to guns, of course, does not explain why teenage boys - 85 per cent of school shootings are done by boys - want to kill people. For that, the sociologists will this week begin a new round of debate about a society which can breed such anger and alienation.