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Of all the questions we ask every day as journalists, the most difficult one has to be “why?”
The others — who, what, where, when — are relatively simple. They pretty much take care of themselves.
We wrestle with “why” because we think it’s shrouded in mystery, abstract excuses that leave our souls unsatisfied.
But the truth is that we struggle with the question because we don’t like the answer.
Why in the world would a man armed for combat walk into an elementary-school classroom and open fire on a bunch of helpless little boys and girls?
Here are some of the answers:
1. There is still pure evil in the world.
It’s easy to talk about a suspect’s sanity and call him deranged. Surely no sane man can stroll into a place where children learn and play and treat it like the front lines of a brutal ground war.
But we cannot discount the fact that evil lurks in every corner of our world and that there are people whose sole goal in life is to take away our joy.
These children who were massacred Friday in Newtown, Conn., were our joy. This evil man stole that from us.
2. There are way too many guns in this country and way too many people with them.
There are some who say that now is not the time to talk about gun control. Parents are grieving. Brothers and sisters are trying to piece it all together. Cops are still investigating.
They are right. Now is not the time to talk about gun control. Now is the time to do something about it.
And while we’re on the subject of “why,” maybe somebody can explain how come gun ownership is at a 20-year high, with $4 billion in commercial gun and ammunition sales.
“With all the carnage from gun violence in our country, it’s still almost impossible to believe that a mass shooting in a kindergarten class could happen,” Mayor Bloomberg said in a statement. “It has come to that. Not even kindergarteners learning their ABCs are safe.”
Bloomberg, a leading voice on gun control, rightly urged Congress and the White House to get serious about the issue so we can stop watching press conferences about senseless shooting sprees.
President Obama, meanwhile, a father with two daughters of his own, tearfully called for “meaningful action” to address what is one of the most easily solvable problems in the nation.
Sure, lowlifes bent on murder and destruction will still find ways to kill.
But why should we continue to make it easy for them with unfettered access to cruel semiautomatic weapons that can fire 30 rounds in the time it takes to turn the page in a Dr. Seuss book?
3. We’ve glorified violence to the point that we’ve become numb to it.
If you’re standing on line today to buy “Call of Duty” or tickets to see James Bond in “Skyfall,” or any other entertainment that endorses a License to Kill, you just don’t get it.
While most of us can separate fact from fiction, the sad truth is that there are some who can’t. For them, a kill is something that leads to bonus points on a video game.
The tap of a button, the flip of a joystick, and you can mow down as many old ladies as you want in a video game car chase. There are no consequences. In fact, you get extra lives.
From “Black Ops” to “CSI” to “Bourne,” our entertainment is death. The special effects have gotten so good that Hollywood can show us global armageddon — all for laughs. Should it be any surprise that some people who witness it, or even play the killers, can become desensitized to real death?
We know the why. The why is that we have a culture of murder in this country, one fed by bloody entertainment and unlimited access to guns. The why is the evil people we may not be able to change, but we can certainly do a better job of stopping.
Why is an excuse, a way to pretend there are no answers.
The answer is we need fewer of both real guns and virtual ones. Hollywood needs to stop blaming just the NRA and pledge to change themselves. And the NRA needs to stop pretending that guns don’t kill people.
Only then will we stop having to ask “why.”
Leonard Greene is a columnist for The Post.