The Search for Closure Continues

As another day has come and gone since the shootings at Northern Illinois University, the victims, their families, the school, the community and the nation wrestle with questions and continue to look for answers they may never find.

And the vigils continue as well.

The Richmond (Va.) Times Dispatch reported this morning that Virginia Tech was going to hold a candlelight vigil for the NIU shooting victims tonight. The newspaper pointed out the special poignance that last week's shooting holds for those at Virginia Tech, who lived through the bloodiest campus attack in the nation's history last spring.

Answers seemed to come more readily for those at Virginia Tech, though. At least, when a little time had passed, Virginia Tech could see the red flags that were out there before the shooting started.

When you can see the red flags, you know what needs to be corrected.

At this point, it's still hard to spot the red flags that must have been there in the NIU shootings case.

Is it that we can't see them, or is it that we won't see them?

There are still some pieces missing from the puzzle. We'll be in a better position to assess everything when we know what Steven Kazmierczak's diagnosis was and what his doctor had prescribed for it.

But not having the information we need leads to a general feeling of frustration and helplessness.

"[I]t's still frustrating" to have no answers, writes Dawn Turner Trice in the Chicago Tribune.

"Can we build a fence that's tall enough or install metal detectors that are sensitive enough?" she asks. "Can we strengthen gun laws so that they're error-proof or find surefire ways to identify those so mentally deranged they'd harm themselves and innocent bystanders?

"We probably can't. There always will be that one person who slips through the greatest of security nets."

We need more details before we can say whether Kazmierczak slipped through the cracks.

"And yet, that doesn't mean we stop trying to close all the gaps."

It's only human nature, I suppose, to want to find answers to unanswerable questions.

Because we always believe there is an answer to be found. We just have to look long enough and hard enough.