As someone who has spent three decades advocating for children, I find it deeply troubling that his first instinct is to make younger children criminally liable rather than address the failures that allowed this tragedy to happen in the first place. Three children are dead. The question is not why a 10-year-old should be punished. The question is why minors have access to firearms. The question is why violence continues to find its way into our schools. The question is why our education, mental health, social welfare, and law enforcement systems repeatedly fail children before a crime is ever committed. Real leadership requires more than reacting to headlines. It requires understanding the problem. Lowering the age of criminal responsibility may generate applause. It may generate media attention. But there is little evidence that it addresses the root causes of youth violence. Children who commit serious crimes must be held accountable. But accountability should not become a substitute for prevention. A senator’s responsibility is not merely to propose the harshest response. It is to propose the most effective one. I have worked with vulnerable children for most of my adult life. Many have been abused, neglected, abandoned, exploited, or exposed to violence long before they ever entered conflict with the law. It is easy to appear tough on children. It is much harder to confront the adult failures that create these tragedies. Before Senator Padilla asks Congress to treat younger children as criminals, perhaps he should explain why government has failed to protect them as children in the first place.