My stomach clenched violently when I heard of the shootings of strangers who innocently came onto someone’s property. For more than a decade, my former job with the city of Vancouver and Clark County was to encourage and coach people to approach their neighbors about concerns and talk it through, looking for ways to find resolution that worked for both sides. We taught conflict-resolution steps. Our mediation office worked closely with law enforcement, code enforcement, animal control, courts, juvenile justice, city and county administration and schools. Those agencies referred lower-level cases so that residents could work out issues with assistance of mediation. Initially people were afraid, but if there was no history or real cause for fear, we’d explore options to resolve problems and build agreements so that neighbors could live more comfortably next to each other. “You don’t have to move to live in a better neighborhood,” we said. But now, what comfort and freedoms have we lost by being so afraid of each other? With everyone armed to the teeth, can anyone honestly say that there’s no cause for fear?