Let the conversation on gun control begin

It is simply unimaginable, the suffering that the families of those slain in Newtown, Conn., are experiencing as a result of Friday’s shooting tragedy. And I cannot begin to comprehend the terror that the teachers and students in the school must have felt when they heard gunshots and saw the shooter.

Even though we’re across the nation, it’s something that you cannot get out of your mind. We feel some of the terror, the question of "what if it happened here?" Obviously it has happened in other communities; there seems to be no safe place.

And the unanswerable question; why? Mental illness; the ease of available guns in the wrong hands; these are recurring themes in too-frequent shootings just this year. Too many innocent lives have been taken.

We understand hurricanes, tornados, floods ... we know they’re out of our control. But this? We have to do something. We can do something.

Let’s start talking about change so this tragedy never happens again.