I’m usually reticent when it comes to talking about emotionally charged subjects like politics, religion or public tragedies. I always have strong opinions but am generally of the notion that in this social media age, what I feel has already been expressed a thousand times, and I prefer not to add to the noise.

But as many have suggested, the elementary school shooting in Newtown, Conn., needs to be a start to conversations about our society. And while I don’t so much want to contribute to the noise, I do want to promote some smart, reasonable and mature voices in hopes they get themselves heard over the din.

One of the first things people strive to learn after a large tragedy is the answer to ‘why?’ It’s what keeps people hanging on to every news report, every tweet, every lead about a story like this. The frustrating thing, of course, is that the why is usually the hardest part to answer. From my own observations as a journalist covering crime and the courts system, one of the most generic answers to why people do the unthinkable is that they are broken — be it because of mental health concerns or poverty or drugs.

The “I Am Adam Lanza’s Mother” post has gotten plenty of traffic in the past week, and for a good reason. While I’m not a fan of the title — because we really don’t have a good sense of Adam Lanza’s mental health situation or how it affected his mother — it does give us a peek inside the world of mental illnesses. As a society we do a horrible job of caring for those who struggle to care for themselves. As the author points out, in many cases prison is the solution of choice. In the absence of a solution, poverty is often the outcome. The important thing to remember is that when you struggle with a mental illness, it is very hard to help yourself.

When it comes to the discussion about guns, that discussion often revolves around how regulations would affect the “good” users of guns and the “bad” ones. Peter Sagal points out that’s a dangerous distinction to make. In so many of these mass murders, the person responsible was “good” before they turned “bad.” He goes on to point out how we label Adam Lanza as a “gunman” because it makes us feel better to paint him as a monster rather than a human being. A human wouldn’t commit such a crime, right? Only monsters do that. But that is the exact kind of dialogue that alienates people within our society and within our communities. If all children are good and innocent, then what happens to cause some of them to end up being labeled as bad people or monsters? Can we, by treating everyone like a good, human being who is worthy of love and care, help in some way to keep someone from feeling alienated and compelled to kill? I would like to think so.

And speaking of guns, Nicholas Kristof takes a sane, reasoned approach to gun control and how the “guns don’t kill people …” argument is a bit unfair. I live in the South, and this is an extremely polarizing topic among everyone I know, so no matter how I feel personally about guns, I will never go so far as to say getting rid of them all is the answer. What makes Kristof’s column so smart and reasonable is that it points out how we are able to love and use cars, but that cars are regulated because they have a high potential for being dangerous. Why aren’t guns treated similarly? Another important point Kristof makes is that the danger of guns isn’t limited to mass murders. A person in this country loses his or her life in gun violence every 20 minutes. How is that not considered a public health crisis?

I don’t have answers, but I do think the takeaway is that we all need to take some deep breaths and facilitate changes that are holistic and reasonable. That means taking a look at everything we do — how we think about guns, how we treat mental health and how we interact with one another. We may not be able to solve the entire problem, but if we can decrease the violence and tension in our society we have done some good.

P.S. On a related note, I watched a lot of people OD on coverage of the Newtown shooting on Friday and Saturday and then turn to social media to emote. Twitter and Facebook became tense places as everyone tried to grieve in their own ways, while many criticized how some chose to do their grieving. At these points, I wanted to say to everyone, ‘Back away from the computer and go outside and live.’ I didn’t, and now I don’t have to because my friend Kristina at Mouth from the South did a great job of saying it herself.