There has been another school shooting; this one occurred in northern Minnesota. While much will be said about it, the real question is what can be done to stop the next shooting.

Jeff Weise, a 16-year-old, walked into his high school on the Red Lake Indian Reservation on March 21 with three guns. He began shooting students and staff members; killing seven before he killed himself. Earlier, he had killed his grandfather, a tribal police officer and his grandfather’s girlfriend with a .22-caliber pistol. Weise then took his grandfather’s service pistol, shotgun and body armor to the school.

It is simple to describe what happened, but not to prevent such nightmares.

Gun control might appear a quick-fix solution to this problem. But more gun laws or bans on guns will not work. Americans have almost 200 million guns, according to a 1997 National Institute of Justice study. These guns aren’t going to disappear. Even if we could ban all guns, it’s not fair to penalize the large majority of responsible gun owners for the actions of a few nutcases.

More gun laws wouldn’t have helped here anyway. Not all the facts are in, but I would guess the .22-caliber Weise used for the murders was owned legally by the grandfather, and Weise stole it. Weise then took the grandfather’s service pistol. Should we take away all cops’ guns because they might fall into the wrong hands? I think most cops would have a problem with that.

Gun manufacturers could make guns that only work for a certain user, but that would be very expensive. And that does nothing about the 200 million guns already out there.

I think the real explanation and solution lies with Weise’s life and society in general.

His family life was traumatic. The New York Times reported Weise’s mother drank excessively, would “hit [her son] with anything she could get her hands on” and tell him he was a mistake. In July 1997, Weise’s father killed himself in a standoff with police. In 1999, his mother suffered a brain injury in a car accident and Weise was sent to his grandparents.

Traumatized at home, Weise found no acceptance at school. He was teased about his size and his Goth clothing. People at the school knew about what happened to his parents, but it apparently made no difference to them.

“I have friends, but I’m basically a loner inside a group of loners,” Weise wrote on a Web site forum, said the forum’s administrator. “I’m excluded from anything and everything they do. I’m never invited. I don’t even know why they consider me a friend or I them.”

Like many people who lack acceptance, Weise embraced a questionable philosophy to fill the void. With Weise, it was Nazism. His favorite quote became one from Adolf Hitler emphasizing the necessity of killing.

There were many warning signs. Weise drew disturbing pictures of skeletons and bullet-ridden bodies and showed them to classmates. He wrote a story about a massacre and posted it on the Internet.

No one listened. No one spoke up. Weise’s actions are totally abhorrent, but so was his community’s ignorance to his problems. Perhaps when people pay attention to massively damaged youths like Weise, we won’t need to take away their guns.

Columns reflect the opinion of the author and not necessarily that of the Northern Star staff.