A year later, and still there are no words to adequately describe the horror and how it made us feel.

It was a year ago Saturday that Adam Lanza entered Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., and gunned down 26 people, including the principal and 20 students. Those children – 12 girls and eight boys – were 6 and 7 years old.

A year later and still, nobody knows why. It’s likely we never will.

The 911 tapes of that horrific day – Dec. 14, 2012 – were released recently. It says much, we think, about just how deeply the wounds of Newtown still scar our national psyche that most news organizations chose not to air them. That is astounding, given this era of sensationalistic talk television in which nothing seems out of bounds.

This was no ordinary mass shooting. Strange as it seems to use that term, they do seem to happen with a frequency that comes far too close to commonplace.

The shooting at Sandy Hook was different, though, because it involved children so young; innocent and particularly undeserving of violence, and totally dependent upon adults to protect them from it.

In that respect, it represents our failure as a culture.

And yet, we have done nothing to prevent the next Newtown.

It happens, we grieve, gnash our teeth, point fingers, make excuses and brace for the next one we know is coming. It all has a certain rinse-and-repeat inevitability to it.

We have done nothing to make it easier those with mental illness to get treatment, and nothing to make it harder for those with mental illness to get guns. The gun lobby even balked at suggestions to restrict high-capacity magazines like the ones that Adam Lanza used to spray 154 bullets in less than five minutes.

This week, Congress passed a law to extend the ban on plastic guns and weapons that go undetected through metal detectors and X-ray machines. It was an example of Washington doing what it is best at – passing laws for which no real problems exist. So far as we can tell, such guns have accounted for exactly zero mass shootings in recent years. Extending the plastic gun ban wasn’t nothing, but it was close to it. Attempts to make the ban a little tougher were blocked.

As we said a few months ago, such mass shootings as occurred in Newtown and at Virginia Tech and elsewhere seem to be the price our society willingly pays for keeping access to guns nearly unfettered. If we weren’t going to address our collective mental health issues and the challenges presented by our permissive gun culture after Newtown, it seems doubtful we ever will. But it’s still worth a try.

Our hearts go out to the people of Newtown, who asked for privacy from the media as the first anniversary of the shooting neared. Such a small request from a group of people who, given all they have lost, seem entitled to so much more – like comprehensive mental health and gun laws that might prevent the next such killing. Maybe we can’t stop them all, but to use that as an excuse to not even try seems cowardly.

It’s worth noting that the families of Newtown passed the first anniversary of the tragedy with no memorial service of the sort that have been held in places like Littleton, Colo., or Blacksburg, Virg., on similar occasions.

That seems only fitting. What’s there to say, after all, about an event that, even a year later, defies all description and reason.

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