Q. Do we learn anything good from these terrible shootings?

A. Every year I learn more not only from my on-scene experiences while at the FBI, but also in years of speaking to those at shootings throughout the country.

With the FBI, I worked the Holocaust Memorial Museum shooting in Washington DC and the Pentagon shooting in Virginia several years ago. I worked many more while running the active shooter program in FBI headquarters as part of the team coordinating responses from the FBI's Strategic Operations Command Center. It's amazing to be among the talented team analyzing and coordinating resources amidst the inevitable but organized chaos that comes with these types of nightmare situations.

My travel to a number of locations where these shootings have occurred has probably had the biggest impact on me. It gave me a chance to speak with people who personally were there when the shooting started, such as the Aurora Theatre manager who calmly called for assistance, Virginia Tech survivors, and the principal, director of safety, and other people at Columbine High School who climbed into a choir closet to keep more than 100 people safe while the shooting was underway.

The people at LAX, for example, had to make a decision not only to close the airport and cancel flights locally but also flights internationally. They knew the impact of the disruption and work aggressively with the FBI to get that airport reopened. We learned a lot from that tragedy.