In the 10 days after an initial attack, a sniper drifting through Maryland, Washington,… In the 10 days after an initial attack, a sniper drifting through Maryland, Washington, D.C., and Virginia, has left eight dead and two more wounded. He fired a single shot from a high power .223-caliber rifle at each, leaving few clues and fewer answers for the victims and their friends, families and communities.

How and why would a person kill so effortlessly, so speedily and so impersonally – to shoot and drive away leaving victims, people with whom he has no connection, to bleed to death?

But the hows of the situation prove simpler than these whys – concrete evidence that can assuage an abstract disjointed fear. One man or woman – with an anonymous-looking white van, a grudge against his or her fellow human, a sharp eye and a gun – can destroy lives.

The cliche is as follows: “Guns don’t kill people; people kill people.” An addendum to this could be: “Guns don’t kill people; people wielding guns, inanimate objects designed solely for the purpose of killing, which make this crime fast, easy and detached, kill people.”

Broken light bulbs don’t cause men to sexually assault; they just make it easier. Guns don’t kill people; they just expedite the process.

To clarify, no one is saying that a piece of molded metal forced one person to commit these actions. People kill people every year with kitchen knives, letter openers, kids’ nylon jump ropes, supermarket shopping bags or their bare unwashed hands.

These methods leave evidence. They are direct. They force the murderer and the victim to look at each other, to acknowledge that someone is ending the life of another, that this is a base, disgusting action and that the killer and the killed are cut from the same human cloth.

These recent murders, facilitated by the gun with which he killed, do not. The gunman did not kill so much as hunt. Police found a sniper’s nest – matted grass and a single shell casing – outside a Bowie, Md., middle school. It seems the sniper waited, belly flat against the ground, gun in hand, to wound a child.

Guns don’t kill people. Look that 13-year-old boy’s mother in the face and say it.

Of course, if we made guns criminal, only criminals would have guns. But both the UK and Australia outlaw handguns and have tight restrictions on long guns, the type used in these killings; each has a correspondingly low rate of gun-related murder. Their criminals have guns and can be arrested accordingly.

The Second Amendment of the U.S. Constitution states that, “A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free state, the right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.” Though the Supreme Court has reviewed this amendment, it has never spoken as to what the word militia means. Whether the original intent of this word includes the generally citizenry as it did in when drafted originally, or the meaning evolved to militias as we know them today remains to be seen.

Even so, the perpetrator did not act with a militia to defend the security of the state. Even if he were part of said militia, the government could implement gun laws that required tracking of gun sales. If they then restricted these sales to those protected under the Second Amendment, perpetrators of such crimes would be easier to apprehend.

If guns were illegal – outside the tracked militias – police could have arrested him numerous times prior to his taking aim at others. An ounce of prevention, in this case, is worth many pounds of flesh.

The National Rifle Association and some hunters rail against regulations, even though compromises exist. Is there a way to ensure that guns used for hunting animals do not end up killing human animals? Not as of yet. But there could be restrictions on bringing guns into urban areas, where humans are the only possible prey. The government could enforce tracking devices on guns, and allow stores to install alarms, so that an alert would sound if there were a gun on the premises.

Guns don’t kill people. Tell that to the dead and wounded. Guns don’t kill people. Blood loss, hemorrhaging, organ ruptures, oxygen deprivation or shock – that’s what kills people.

Since Oct. 2, the day of the first shootings, people in that region have lived with the constant, invasive fear that they would be next. Authorities stop all white vans – the vehicle witnesses have seen leaving the crime scenes – to inspect them. They contact every known owner of a .223-caliber rifle.

They look desperately for fingerprints, hair and clothing fibers, anything that might form a picture of a killer and the gun with which he killed. Guns don’t kill people, except of course, when they do.

Sydney Bergman can be reached at [email protected].