Madness.

How else do you explain what happened – again – on a college campus yesterday afternoon.

This time it was Northern Illinois University in Dekalb, Ill. Police say a former student dressed in black waltzed into a large lecture hall and opened fire on a crowded classroom.

Before he turned the gun on himself, five people were killed. A sixth died this morning. Another 16 were wounded.

The classroom, packed with as many as 160 students, turned into mayhem, with students running for cover and stampeding toward the exits.

There are, of course, many things I would like to know about what happened on that campus yesterday.

But I’ll tell you what I don’t want to know. I don’t want to know a thing about the shooter. I don’t want to know his name. I don’t want to know what led him to such a gutless, heinous act, opening fire on a defenseless group of kids.

I don’t want to know his life story, or what kind of difficulties led him to such a monstrous rampage.

I don’t particularly want to know what was on his MySpace page, if he felt alienated, or wasn’t loved as a child.

All I know is I want this kind of carnage to stop. I have a daughter in college, and a son who will do the same next year.

Every time you hear about one of these instances, it’s like a dagger in the heart.
I’ve never been much of a gun guy. Never owned one. Never fired one, unless you count the BB-gun I cherished as a kid.

But there is one thing I am beginning to wonder about. I wonder what would have happened if just one other person, a faculty member or another student, had had a weapon in that classroom yesterday.

I know, I know, that’s not the answer.

I would agree that the answer is fewer guns, not more.

But I’m beginning to wonder.

If that gunman had been taken down and it had saved even one life or kept one student from being wounded, wouldn’t that have been worth it?

Instead, we wait for the next rampage, certain only in the knowledge that it is a matter of when, not if.