"Let's face it; all I did was talk to this kid." The words of Willoughby South High School assistant principal and 19-year educator Jeff Lyons.  In the rush to blame someone--we look to our administrators and the parents of this world will be quick to say they don't know how a young man got a hold of a gun.

The mother of the troubled Lake County, suburban-raised boy is quoted as saying that she could not believe her son was trying to commit suicide and that she did not know where he got the gun. I believe her when she says that she could not predict his suicidal thoughts, but I can't for a moment believe the second claim.

Yesterday, the day after the gun incident in Willoughby, I visited two schools, one public and one charter, and both schools spent the better part of the day in a security drill. Time our students could have spent quietly reading a book, or even playing hooky, fishing down by the Cuyahoga River.

We don't have time to ignore this crisis anymore. OUR children everywhere endure lives of electronic agitation and stress, beyond the "duck and cover" and toxic stress of television, cigarettes and widespread pollution, I endured as a child in the sixties and seventies.

Thank you to the Plain Dealer for balanced coverage of this story on Wednesday. I don't want this job. The Plain Dealer, on the same page, reports on a barking dog case that has pitted neighbor against neighbor. Our lives and our behavior do affect our community. Our decisions on the guns and the enslaved animals we own to protect our property also affect our ability to survive together. Is it too late to fix America?