How can we live with the constant threat of violence?

I WAS VISITING TUCSON, where I’d lived for over 40 years, when the Russians invaded Ukraine. Air Force jets circled in the skies above us as I watched my 5-year-old grandsons on the playground. I’d just listened to a podcast interview with a woman in the suburbs of Kyiv, who described how children were helping to fill windows with books because no one had sandbags. In preparation for bomb blasts, the mothers were teaching their toddlers to pretend they were turtles: to fall to the floor on their bellies, cover their ears with their hands, and open their mouths, a game reminiscent of the Cold War’s “duck and cover.” If you fall to the ground with your mouth open, she explained, it helps protect your lungs during an explosion.

Later, looking at the photos of the bombed-out buildings, I knew that neither sandbags nor books could have helped; those children were dead. And then the mass murder at Robb Elementary School in Uvalde,