The first reaction to horrors such as the shooting of these poor Amish schoolgirls is always horror, followed by a rapid failure to appreciate how somebody could do something like that

After a while, there will begin the wailing sound of somebody calling for a ban on guns.

On the face of it, this is a sensible reaction. Charles Roberts – such an ordinary name to join the long list of America’s mad murderers – took a veritable arsenal of weapons with him, including a shotgun, bent on destruction. Charles Carl Roberts IV may have planned to molest the girls at the Amish school, but police have no evidence that he actually did, State Police Commissioner Jeffrey B. Miller said.

Miller said police could not confirm Roberts IV's claim about molesting young relatives when Roberts would have been a just a child himself, and he said Roberts' family members knew nothing of molestation in his past.

Roberts left one note for his wife, one for each of his three children and a note and checklist in his truck, Miller said. The note to his wife talked about his anguish over the loss of the couple's newborn daughter, Elise, in 1997, Miller said.

But would anything have stopped someone who was evidently without any moral compunction about the vilest of all kinds of murder – cold-blooded execution – against the least threatening of all victims – little girls? 

It will probably not help us understand him when we do discover what “excuse” Roberts thought he had for his behaviour, what had made him so angry or humiliated that he would wreak vengeance on people who could not possibly have done him wrong.

Would a psychiatric intercession have preserved him and those defenceless children?  Possibly. Would a gun ban? Doubt it. 

We are all vulnerable to the lunatic actions of another. Who has not moved a little further back from the edge of a platform after reading of some nutcase who has tried, or succeeded, in pushing an innocent commuter in front of a train?

There was anger among the Muslim community when John Reid urged them to turn in potential terrorists from within their ranks.  But I doubt anyone would have turned in Charles Roberts, or Thomas Hamilton, the Dunblane killer, or Michael Ryan, the Hungerford gunman.

In a mad, mad world, we prefer to turn away from signs of madness than confront it or, better still, try to heal the sufferers. 

Most of us suffer from the same pressures of modern life that drove those three men, and many others, over the edge to commit acts that their own younger selves would have previously considered unimaginable. 

Almost all of us can withstand those pressures.  For some reason, they could not.

But the one thing we can all benefit from is the help and understanding from our fellow sufferers

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