The news from Georgetown, Pennsylvannia about the incredibly tragic shootings of ten Amish school children on October 2, has struck a chord with people around the world, and it seems more poignant with each new detail that emerges.

Motivations aside, the mere concept of taking the life of a child is so crushingly difficult for the great bulk of humans that it becomes inconceivable when it involves people as untainted as the Amish.

Compounding this loss with the victims being young girls, and it would seem that it cannot be any worse, but yet, when we hear that one young victim asked that she be killed first, ostensibly to save her younger sisters, the feeling one is left with is of devastation.

I would not want to detract from any other of the recent, similar school shootings that have been reported around this country, as they are all abhorrent, but if anything is left of our capacity for forgiveness as humans, it can be found in the heart of the Amish community, as reports of dozens of Amish neighbors of the man who killed these children had come out to mourn him with his family.

The perpetrator's name seems unimportant, as are the reasons he did what he did.

If we can take away anything of use from the tragedy, it might be that even in the darkest hours of human experience, there can still be enough light for us to find each other and to begin to heal.

Along with the drifter/gunman in Bailey, Colorado five days previously, the shooting of a school principal in Wisconsin, and the apprehension of a 13 year old who fired an automatic weapon in a Missouri school on October 9, it is tempting to make connections. Because of the close proximity in time, experts' concerns about copycat attacks have been raised.

James Fox, a criminologist at Northeastern University in Boston suggests that news media bear some responsibility for this phenomenon, especially when attackers' personalities and grudges are exposed to high-profile public analysis, as when the two teenaged gunmen in the Columbine, Colorado attack were featured on the cover of a news magazine.

"We've seen with school shootings and postal shootings that the shooters can become role models for others," Fox said. "While most sympathize with the victims, others empathize with the shooters. It's the publicity they get that turns the shooter into a celebrity that spawns more of them."

While the act of killing school children remains unfathomable, what Fox says may make sense.

A hastily arranged school safety conference happened in Maryland on Tuesday, (just hours after the 13 year old Missouri boy fired an AK47 into a ceiling) and George Bush was the main speaker. The White House invited a panel of experts to discuss the problem and to try to come up with possible solutions. Experts said officials don't get serious about safety until the shootings make headlines. They encouraged all schools to have a crisis response plan in place now. They also said the next step for schools is to create a culture where students are encouraged to tell officials what they know.

The conference was largely ceremonial, as victims and representatives of volunteer organizations offered testimony to Bush administration officials, who listened but returned little.

"In many ways, I'm sorry we're having this meeting," Bush said, calling the recent shootings "incredibly sad."

One national program launched in 2002 by the PAX organization for solutions to gun violence is called the Speakup Campaign and was created to foster communication between students, faculty and parents.

If a student suspects a weapon-related threat in their school or neighborhood, they can call 1-866-Speakup (1-866-773-2587).

People in the Amish community continue to practice complete forgiveness. When charity funds for the victims' loved ones first began to be organized, the Amish included Roberts's family as recipients.

Of the ten girls who were shot in the West Nickel Mines School classroom five were killed and at press time, five girls remain hospitalized. One of the girls was taken off life support and brought home to die on Monday, but continued to breathe on her own, according to Daniel Esh, 57, an Amish artist.

The 6-year-old girl, whom he identified as Rosanna King, was returned to Hershey Medical Center for further treatment, however, the hospital would not provide information regarding the victims at the request of family members.

Esh said that he got the information from other members of the Amish community and that he had also heard that the child - born Sept. 11, 2000 - was able to squeeze a relatives hand.

The funerals for the five slain girls - Marian Fisher, 13; Anna Mae Stoltzfus, 12; Naomi Rose Ebersol, 7; and sisters Mary Liz Miller, 8, and Lena Miller, 7 - were held Thursday and Friday of last week.