On June 29, 1983, many of us whose livelihoods depend on the National Football League were stunned by the news that the Kansas City Chiefs’ Joe Delaney had drowned.

Our first reaction was how and why could a 24-year-old husband and father of three and a brilliant, young running back with seemingly the whole world at his feet be gone so suddenly? Our shock was quickly replaced by wonderment as the details surrounding Delaney’s death came out and we learned that, in spite of the fact he couldn’t swim, he’d dived into a pond to try to help three boys who appeared to be in peril and had, in fact, saved the life of a 6-year-old boy. Tragically, the other two boys died with Delaney that day. But in giving his own life to save that 6-year-old boy, Delaney had given the greatest gift a man can give, his life to save another’s, a sacrifice we could understand and a selfless act we could cherish forever.

Almost nine years later to the day, the quiet of our summer was shattered again by the news that Philadelphia Eagles All-Pro DT Jerome Brown and his nephew Gus had died in a car accident in his hometown of Brooksville, Fla. At 6-2, 295 pounds, Brown was a mountain of a man beloved by his teammates and Eagles fans alike. Brown had his wild and immature side, but how could anyone not love a big teddy bear who used his first NFL check to buy his folks a new house in the Brooksville community he gave to so generously and repeatedly?

With his penchant for good times and fast cars, Brown’s and his nephew’s deaths were caused by Brown losing control of his Corvette, which was traveling at a very high speed. Senseless and tragic, to be sure, but a fact we were forced to accept and understand because, like Delaney’s death, it came as a result of a choice Brown had made for himself.

I covered the bulk of Walter Payton’s days with the Chicago Bears, and in the 12 years between his retirement and death, he had become a real friend. Not an everyday, let’s-grab-a-beer buddy but a guy who, whenever we’d see each other — usually once every few months or so — was genuinely concerned about me, my wife, the kids, the paper and anybody and everybody else who ever crossed his path.

The shock of Walter’s story had come the February before his death, when he’d emerged from a couple of months of solitude and appeared at a news conference, looking pale and startlingly thin, to announce he’d been diagnosed with a rare liver disease, primary sclerosing cholangitis, which would develop into the liver cancer that took his life. How could arguably the greatest football player ever, certainly the most remarkable physical specimen I’ve ever seen and one of the finest human beings I’ve ever known, be ravaged so quickly and completely by this horrible disease?

While Walter’s death was every bit as senseless and tragic as Delaney’s and Brown’s, we grow up knowing disease is as much a part of the human experience as love and death. So, while we can loathe it, fear it and curse it, disease is something we have come to understand.

I hate that a part of my job is chronicling human tragedy, but I can live with what I can understand. I do not understand why Sean Taylor is gone, and I pray it is a fact that none of us will accept without dedicating ourselves to finding a way to make the violence stop.

Ignore the fools who’d suggest he was a troubled or angry young man who had made bad choices and put himself in harm’s way. He was a brilliantly talented 24-year-old kid from a good home with loving parents, a devoted father, a beloved fiancé and a cherished and treasured teammate and friend to hundreds, who had overcome a few bad choices born of youth and immaturity. Sean Taylor should have been able to trust that being home in bed with his family at 1:30 in the morning would never be the wrong place at the wrong time. We let him down, not the other way around!

I believe most of us have found the wisdom to accept the things we cannot change, and that is how we are able to mourn the losses and cherish the memories of the Joe Delaneys, Jerome Browns and Walter Paytons of the world. But how many of us have the courage to change the things we can? To just accept the death of Sean Taylor as another senseless tragedy makes anyone who does as guilty as the kids who apparently pulled the trigger.

The only way to give meaning and understanding to the infinite tragedy of Sean Taylor’s death is for us as a society to find the brains and the balls to go out into our streets and take responsibility for, and give guidance to, the kids we’ve put there. And to take their damn guns away and replace them with hope and the promise that no mother, father, brother, sister, relative or friend will ever again have to lie awake with the pain that the Taylors do tonight. Then, and only then, will I understand why Jackie Taylor will never know her dad, and perhaps be able to live with how we let him down. How many more stories like Taylor’s can we read before we say, “Enough is enough”?