Fact is, like knives, guns were routine fixtures in the lives of my parents and grandparents, but none thought to show up at school to massacre schoolmates or co-workers.

I remember when the idea of a school massacre first came to my attention. This predated Munich by roughly a decade and, as then, the perpetrators were followers of Arafat and the slaughtered were Jews.

To my mind the first incident remains the more shocking, mainly because these were adults who had gone out purposely to kill children. Can there be a more fundamental breakdown in the constraints that define civilization?

As I say, at the time I was shocked, possibly because I was no older than those slaughtered. It seemed a new kind of evil, but it had all been done before, albeit done with some pains taken to hide the deed from the world.

So the idea was even then out there, only applied in a new way. I am no longer so easily shocked because I know the idea will always be applied again, if possibly in a new way.

There is only one way to combat those who would take the idea and implement it and that is to take action against them. The enemy is not the idea, nor the idea of using something as a weapon that can be used for either a dastardly or noble intent. The enemy is the person who would use anything to kill us and our children, when all we want to do is go happily about our lives.