It was 12 years ago last week when two students at Columbine High School used a variety of weapons, including homemade propane bombs, a shotgun, a semi-automatic rifle and a 9mm handgun in a massacre that left 12 of their classmates and one teacher dead before both shooters committed suicide.

In the days before the attack, the two students prepared several bombs and modified their weapons. These two students were in violation of several federal laws, including the National Firearms Act and the Gun Control Act of 1968, even days before the shooting began.

The incident shook our nation, and once again the national debate over gun control consumed media outlets all over the world.

In response, the U.S. Secret Service, in conjunction with the National Education Association, undertook a study of school violence and published their report three years later, in 2002

The Secret Service Report concluded that schools were taking false hope in physical security, when they should be paying more attention to the pre-attack behaviors of students.

There’s a reason all of this sounds familiar.

Nearly eight years to the day of the Columbine tragedy, a distraught student at Virginia Tech shot and killed 32 fellow students and injured scores of others on April 16, 2007. He also committed suicide.

There was more political fallout. Other nations criticized a U.S. culture that is seemingly enthralled with guns and violence. More gun control laws were introduced and passed. It should also be noted that the university had a campus firearms ban before that massacre happened.

Sadly, I could go on and on with more examples of gun violence and the ways in which those horrific events are exploited by politicians and pundits from both sides of the gun control debate.

But what’s the point?

The point, my friends, is not about the guns. It’s about people and human behavior.

I am treading into this topic as a response to a friend’s Facebook post in which she was commenting on an editorial from the Lewiston Sun Journal regarding a bill before the Maine Legislature that would allow lawmakers to carry handguns.

“In the wake not only of Tucson, but also the shooting at NY City Hall (’03 – one Councilman shot another dead) and various examples of ‘going postal,’ this seems . . . wise?”

I have immense respect for the woman who wrote the above posting on her Facebook wall. She is extraordinarily smart and equally passionate. If I’m going to debate her, I need to bring my A game, and even then the odds are stacked against me.

But it was just two words from her pithy post that jarred me: “going postal,” just another catchy euphemism that grants us permission to brush off and dismiss a much darker topic: The cost of mental illness and our society’s unwillingness to acknowledge the ramifications of a grossly insufficient treatment system.

The genesis of the term “going postal” can be traced back to the early 1980s, when a spree of shootings by U.S. Postal workers became a macabre trend.

The term is now comic relief, as best evidenced by frequent double entendres on the Seinfield show, in which “Newman, the postal worker” was often teased for his bizarre behavior and frequent angry outbursts.

We laugh.

Some say the definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over while expecting different results. Keep laughing, if you can.

I am a big believer in the Second Amendment. I tell my friends that the Second Amendment ensures the continuation of the much more beloved First Amendment.

But I must admit that I am sometimes conflicted. After all, our society understands and accepts limitations on freedom of speech and expression. It is a violation of federal law to say, “I am going to kill the president.” It is also against the law to scream “Fire” in a crowded theater.

Former Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart famously quipped “ I know it when I see it,” as he struggled to define what is and what is not pornography.

Reasonable people can agree to be reasonable, right?

Sure, but what about the unreasonable people? That is a different subject altogether.

The bottom line is this: Guns represent power.

You never see news footage of refugees slinging rifles over their shoulders as they are forced to leave their homeland because of a tyrannical government, do you?

Alan Keyes, a conservative African American and a perennial presidential candidate, once quipped, “This nation would have never had a slavery problem if the people of Africa were armed.”

Any half-rate student of history can rattle off a litany of government abuses, which all began with the collection of the public’s firearms.

Guns are part of our American culture and psyche. One of my core beliefs is that power should be equally distributed and held by the people.

Thoreau seemingly agreed with my stance, when he wrote, the government that governs least governs best. Of course, he wrote Civil Disobedience in 1849, so it’s hard to know where he would come down on the post Columbine gun control debate.

I own three guns (a .22 rifle, a 12-gauge shotgun and a 20-gauge shotgun). Ironically, I don’t allow firearms in my home. My guns are stored in a gun-safe at my father-in-law’s home, some 15 miles away. They are used for hunting.

There are two reasons for not having firearms in my home.

1.) I have teenage sons who are often alone at home while Laura and I are working; and

2.) I have a responsibility to acknowledge and manage my own mental illness.

I feel safer without firearms in my home, but I am also troubled by any further encroachments on my Second Amendment rights. It doesn’t mean I think everyone should own an Uzi. Then again, reasonable people can agree to be reasonable.

But what are we going to do about the unreasonable people?

Laugh, or introduce legislation requiring background checks on the sale of propane tanks?