In our opinion: Hard news

It’s going to be hard for parents, teachers and councelors to explain to the young students at Armin Jahr Elementary School why one of their fellow students brought a handgun to school and shot another.

Tougher still will be the task assigned to investigators who will try to figure out, for themselves, what happened Wednesday when an child of less than 10 years shot another youngster just minutes before the bell rang to end the day.

Clouded further will be the much sought answer as to why it happened at all. Key to it will be the obvious question asking how that child got their hands on a loaded handgun.

As the citizens of Bremerton deal with the recent and fresh concerns for a serial murder in a West Bremerton neighborhood they will now add to it the concern of the unknowable, the unthinkable and the unreal idea that one child perhaps tried to kill another.

According to the experts, hundreds school based shootings and murders in the last century are mostly the result of planning and preparing and not the actions of a student that simply “snapped.” Another question likely to be pursued for the next several weeks is one asking what signs were missed and if there were any clues from the young shooter’s life and behavior before the gun came out and the trigger was pulled.

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