WASHINGTON — It is a conundrum of wordsmiths that sometimes events are so horrible that words escape us. Bereft of the tools of our trade, we are left with what is perhaps the only appropriate response to something as heart-stopping as the massacre of children: Silence.

Every mass shooting has three elements: the killer, the weapon and the cultural climate. As soon as the shooting stops, partisans immediately pick their preferred root cause with corresponding pet panacea. Names are hurled, scapegoats paraded, prejudices vented. The argument goes nowhere.

If you’re reading this, I guess the Mayans were wrong.

Online shopping has many wonderful aspects. As someone who has placed 203 Amazon orders this year, I should know.

If only Hillary Rodham Clinton had not been worn down after a week of flights and high-stakes diplomacy, U.N. Ambassador Susan Rice might now be well on her way to being the next secretary of state.

There are no words for this. A gunman opened fire Friday at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn., killing 20 children and six adults. Twenty children, all 6 and 7 years old.

Mike Tipping, the communications director for the liberal activist group Maine People’s Alliance, is granted a regular opinion column in the Kennebec Journal and Morning Sentinel.