You’d think the media would get tired of it. It’s more or less the same story every time some deranged youth takes a gun to school and starts shooting the place up —like Kipling’s Kurrum Valley scamp “who knows no word of moods and tenses,”

But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.

What “causes” such behavior? Is it the availability of guns? In the case of “Andy” Williams of Santana High School, California, this was a less favored explanation than usual—perhaps because the gun he used was of a type (a .22 revolver) of which no one had as yet thought to propose the banning. But there were plenty of the usual suspects left. Is it our “violent” culture and images of “violence” on television? Or a more general moral decline? Is it uncaring parents or unobservant teachers? Or are we thrown back upon the “bad seed” explanation? Young Mr. Williams, it appears, had been the victim of bullying, so there were seemingly endless opportunities to discuss what might, assuming that the laws of human nature were repealed, be done about that.

Yet through it all, the media never cast its eyes down to look at the explanation lying coyly under its nose. The kids do it at least in part because doing it makes them instant celebrities. I remember once when I was a teacher asking a class of sixteen-year-olds how many of them thought they would one day