There is a wisdom of the head, and a wisdom of the heart. — Pickwick Papers

My Take – When confronted with a problem, I have to learn to control both the emotional and logical aspects of my personality.  My heart wants to do the right thing morally, and do it quickly.  It wants to comfort the afflicted, punish the bad guy, and cry out at the heavens for an answer as to “Why?”.  My head tells me to look at the problem, apply aid as it is needed, find a cause for the problem, and then apply solutions that correct the immediate issue and prevent it from reoccurring. 

Problem is, both are right, and sometimes what either of them wants is impossible.  We must aid those harmed by horrific circumstances, but we must also use common sense to allocate our finite resources in the most effective way.  We must indeed punish those who harm others, but we have to dispassionately figure out who that is instead of just lynching the first easy target that comes along.  As to figuring out root cause, sometimes you can, and a lot of times you can’t. 

What we’re running into today and in the near future is that a lot of people are running with their hearts too much, and running with their heads on the wrong things.  They are lashing out emotionally in an effort to punish someone, anyone, for the horror which was perpetrated in Newton, possibly because the person who is actually responsible for what happened is dead and beyond their reach.   We also see emotions running away from those of us on the side that is being assailed.  We begin spewing slogans and snark in response to the keening from the anti-gun side of the argument.  Neither is helpful.

On the logical side, the anti-gun crowd is focused like a laser on exploiting this tragedy to further their agenda.  Some of them do it with the best of intentions, while some do it in the most cynical manner possible.  On our side, we risk being seen as as insensitive as the anti’s by telling the hard truths, but telling them in a way that makes it sound as if the shooting at Newton was regrettable, but inevitable and unavoidable.  We must also guard against using this tragedy to advance our agenda.

What we must do is follow our heart when it comes to comforting those hurt by a madman, but use our head when analyzing what happened and what we can do to try to either prevent or mitigate a reoccurrence of this tragedy.  Swinging to extremes on either side is counterproductive, and will only cause us to go off on tangents that help no one.