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So it's happened. A fatal shooting not at an elementary or preschool but at a daycare center.  Two men shot at and killed each other in Quebec there.  Fortunately, this time, none of the children were harmed. And so it goes.  The contract has been broken.  Used to be, schools and places where children -- and babies -- gathered used to be sacrosanct, like churches an hospitals. Bad things just didn't happen there.  If people were angry, they killed each other in their homes, and later, supermarkets or theaters or places where adults came together .  Not places where innocent children learned or played. But then there was Newtown.  And we, or at least I, realized that evil can grow and live anywhere.  Maybe I'm naive for thinking people who are out to kill keep certain situations out of the question.  It would seem, now, that's no longer a given. Fifthy-three children were at this daycare at the time of the sho...

We've talked so much about the shooting victims in Newtown, those beautiful children shot dead in their classrooms, and the teachers, too. But not a lot is written about the witnesses to these tragedies, and how they, too, are changed for life. An article in  Sunday Review in The New York Times yesterday talked about how we ignore those who have been wounded, or have been there at the scene of carnage. At  little-noticed report , the story said, "suggested that children exposed to community violence might turn to violence themselves as 'a source of power, prestige, security, or even belongingness.'" It said these children -- who had seen friends gunned down on porches, or in parking lots, or were the victims of a random bullet like the 15-year-old, who only days before had sung at President Obama's inauguration, struck down by a stranger's anger at another -- needed help and professional counseling. Op-ed writer Alex Kotlowitz noted "a remarka...