June 4, 2010, Daily Post (Liverpool) Tragic and unfathomable, by Phil Redmond,

June 4, 2010, Daily Post (Liverpool) Tragic and unfathomable, by Phil Redmond, 368 words

TIME will no doubt give everyone some inkling into what drove Derrick Bird to do what he did, just as Thomas Hamilton did at Dunblane and, before him, Michael Ryan at Hungerford, in 1987. That in itself is a sad fact. That there have been so many.

We appear used to hearing of such brutalities coming out of America, the land of the free; the right to bear arms, and where there are more guns than people. Indeed, the inspiration behind Bob Geldof 's Boomtown Rats' big hit, I Don't Like Mondays, were the words uttered by 16-year-old Brenda Spencer to explain why she had gone on her school killing spree in San Diego in 1979.

Yet, in all this, the words of the Deputy Chief Constable of Cumbria should not be lost. That tragic as these acts are, they are the unfathomable acts of mentally disturbed individuals. In short, life must go on, with another sobering reminder that even a country like Finland has had two such mass-shootings in 2007 and 2008.

The challenge appears then, not to get sidetracked into debates on access to weapons, but how we spot, help and care for troubled individuals.