Six people are shot, and two of them die, in an altercation in Kansas City. Two young men are killed after a Wornall Road party. Topeka has had a rash of shootings, and Lawrence has seen too much gunfire in locales such as Redbud Lane and downtown.

It wasn’t too long ago that a major hassle involving a Kansas University basketball player resulted in a knife-incident that sent him to the hospital for major repairs. Just about any time people get together early in the morning, here or in Kansas City, Topeka, almost any town, there can be serious trouble often involving guns or knives.

What is the common denominator for most of this senseless violence? Virtually all of it happens in the early morning hours when people would be far better off at home in bed, or at least somewhere that does not involve drunken or substance-abusing people with weapons.

Remember that old advice? Lots of things happen after midnight, and most of them are bad. All one has to do is look at the time logs for the violence and brutality that occur in any city, and most of them are after midnight, often around 2 and 3 a.m.

Who wants to be in many parts of Lawrence after midnight, particularly on weekends when the tendency for brutishness and lack of self-control escalate tremendously? How long before somebody goes on a tear here that produces a six-person shooting like the one in Kansas City?

It is impossible for many young people to believe, but about any kind of “entertainment” that happens after 1 a.m. can just as easily occur before midnight.

So go out, have a good time, enjoy friends and acquaintances and then JUST GO HOME around midnight or even before. Closing time at some establishments has a tendency to cast out the undesirable element that is not friendly to the less aggressive.

As we said, lots of things happen after midnight, and most of them are bad.