Our darkest collective domestic nightmare remains the reality that massacres like last month's at a Connecticut elementary school can and will continue to happen unless drastic steps are taken.
But what are those steps?
What really goes beyond symbolism that only serves to cloak our fears?
That conversation remains difficult to have because we are a nation largely running scared of what we've become. We are scared and often confused by the scope of our 2nd Amendment guarantees. We are scared of the staggering, and growing, degree of civilian armament in America.
We are terrified of the madmen who walk among us and reveal their intentions only when it's too late.
We are also scared of the reality that a committed killer who gets the jump on a school, theater, church, mall, or army base is capable of quickly inflicting unimaginable harm even in the presence of armed resistance.
That's why some of the solutions being bandied about appear to many to invite more harm than good.
The idea, for instance, of arming teachers, administrators and school janitors with weapons has to be part of the conversation. These are the adults to whom we entrust our children. But is that really a viable deterrent to the violently deranged?
From my limited perspective, it seems a limited solution.
My sister is an educator who has taught and continues to work as an administrator in an area school district. She loves children. She would do almost anything to protect her own and others.
But no one who knows her could even imagine her with a gun in her hand. Neither can she. The same is true of many of her colleagues whom I've met over the years.
These are educators. They work on chalkboards. To ask them now to deal in chalk outlines is asking them to become something they are not.
The same is true of my father, a janitor in a large urban school district. He has made a career of keeping schools clean and being available to do the lifting and carrying when needed.
But a gun in his hand?
I don't think so.
He'd rather hit you with his bible.
Maybe that's just my family. They're not gun people. And regardless of any training they received, they would never be considered SWAT material.
Perhaps there are those on school payrolls who would be amenable and could be sufficiently trained to maim or kill in emergencies.
That would take a special person with special training to hunt a killer in an environment of stressed-out children. At least that's the way it seems to me.
Yes, the conversation is worth having. But there has to be a better way.
More police officers and highly trained security guards in schools seem a no-brainer. But that would prove expensive and America's memory – even of massacres – runs surprisingly short.
But why does cost matter? We provide tight security for children in other parts of the world. Why not our own?
Finally, the language of the ongoing debate has become more pointed than I can ever recall in any national gun discussions. That's as it should be. Too many of our children have perished in schools, both near and afar.
That's why I remain far from offended by some of the blunt language I hear being used by those who argue that more guns, not fewer, are the answer.
"I wish to God (that the Sandy Hook Principal) had an M-4 in her office, locked up so when she heard gunfire, she pulls it out. . . and takes (the gunman) out and takes his head off before he can kill those precious kids," said GOP Rep. Louie Gohmert from Texas.
The M-4 is an assault rifle best used in close quarters combat. It's what we armed our soldiers with in Iraq and Afghanistan.
Now some members of Congress want to put that same weapon in the hands of our teachers.
Fine, let's talk about it. Perhaps we will soon be making action figure dolls of our educators.
Still, there must be a better way to secure our schools from killers. It's a question of will.