Nearly a week since the horrible school shooting in Connecticut and the pain and shock has not yet subsided, at least not enough to be perceptible.

When the shooting stopped, 20 small children were dead along with six adults at the school and the shooter.

Parents all across the country stand in horror of what happened and ask: Could this happen to my child? What can prevent this in the future?

What drove a 20-year-old man — described by those who knew him as disturbed — to walk into a school and slaughter small school children and their teachers is simply inexplicable.

Like many such massacres, it’s human nature to want to understand why it happened.

The very core of our beings wants to understand such horrible things and make a plan to prevent them in the future.

But there is no logic, no explanation that can make the senseless make sense to us.

Sadly, as tough as it is for us to admit, in many ways, we cannot prevent criminally insane people from committing heinous acts.

Until the day when, perhaps, modern science allows us to look into the hearts and minds of people, our world will continue to have to stare evil in the face.

In this case, could tighter gun laws have helped? Perhaps, but the killer may have simply opted for another means of death to administer on the innocent.

Laws don’t prevent truly demented, disturbed or evil people from criminal behavior. That’s a tough life lesson for the rest of us to have to swallow, made worse by the tears of last week’s acts.

The best we can do is pray for the victims and their families.