The week before Christmas has been a tough one for Madison.

Especially for the families impacted by the Abundant Life Christian School’s shooting on Monday and all the children who were in the school who had to endure a trauma that no kid should have to experience.

There’s been universal praise, as well there should be, for the way our first responders reacted. They did what they’ve been trained to do and did it expertly. It’s reassuring to know we’ve got such competent leaders, unlike leaders in other communities who exhibited indecisiveness when the chips were down. The pity is, of course, that they had to answer such a call in the first place.

Hats off to Police Chief Shon Barnes, the Fire Department and its paramedics, the Dane County Sheriff’s Department and the dozens of others who were part of the emergency response to the nation’s 83rd school shooting in 2024. Plus, Dane County Executive Melissa Agard and Mayor Satya Rhodes-Conway professionally helped keep the public informed and offered county and city services to anyone needing help.

Just how far-reaching the response was is exemplified by an email I received from retired Madison Police Captain Joe Balles. Balles and I were exchanging emails about a column I had recently written just minutes before the 911 call came in from Abundant Life.

In 2016 Balles retired from a 32-year Madison Police Department career, then he served another three years as the Madison School District’s safety and security administrator. He was active a few years ago organizing the Dane County Emergency Management’s Mass Casualty Response Team, on which he still volunteers.

Like so many others, he rushed to SSM Health’s East Madison Clinic at the corner of Buckeye and Stoughton Roads. The clinic’s administration had volunteered the site as a parent/student reunification spot just a third of a mile from the school.

“In our creation of this team, we never actually thought of or practiced using a four-floor medical health clinic building for a reunification site,” he admitted. “But having spent three years in my retirement with MMSD and always fearing this day, I have to say it all worked out pretty well.

“The parents were amazingly patient as they awaited members of our Mass Casualty Response Team to go to the ‘parent floors’ to find them, and then take them to the upper floors to be reunited with their kiddos. By 4:45 p.m. yesterday (Monday) afternoon we had every surviving student reunited with their family and felt pretty good about that.”

And as well they should.

The law enforcement’s actions weren’t the the only exemplary response to the horrific incident. Perhaps it takes a tragedy like this to bring people together, but bring them together it did.

The United Way of Dane County immediately announced a fund drive to help the victims’ families. So did area churches. Restaurants provided meals. Rocky Rococo’s sent pizzas to the students who had been evacuated from the school to the church next door. Coffee shops made donations.

And people from Madison and beyond crowded vigils to show their support to the school’s community.

But it’s a shame that it has to come to this. From the little kids in elementary grades to the teenagers in ALCS’ high school, they were all getting ready and excited for Christmas vacation and all that the holidays bring, especially to the young.

They’ve been robbed of that this year, and yet we can’t come to grips with finding an answer to why America stands alone in allowing children to die where they should be the safest.

Somehow we’ve got to understand that not everyone in America needs a gun. Other civilized countries came to realize that decades ago. Why can’t we?

Dave Zweifel is editor emeritus of The Capital Times. dzweifel@madison.com, 608-252-6410 and on Twitter @DaveZweifel.  

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