Total knee-jerk reaction, Coleen.

(freedictionaly by Farlex) "Knee-jerk reaction: an immediate unthinking emotional reaction produced by an event or statement to which the reacting person is highly sensitive; - in persons with strong feelings on a topic, it may be very predictable."

Ugh. Where do I even start with this "article." Well, how about instead of using this tragedy as a platform for "gun control," why not use it as a platform for mental healthcare awareness? It's not the guns that kill people; its people that kill people.

As a society we've ignored the needs of those who often look for help but don't receive it. I'd be surprised to learn in the coming weeks that there was zero warning signs that the gunman was on a path to evil. Perhaps he even tried to settle an issue without violence before resorting to, what in his mental state, was an option. People don't just wake up one day and decide to do this. It's a long road down that path of evil, and society is to blame for not recognizing the problem sooner.

A gun control law will only make it harder for responsible citizens to obtain a weapon. Remember prohibition? All it did was keep the honest people honest... and created a giant black market to serve those who didn't care for the law.

Do some research, cities with conceal and carry laws have far less violence than those with very strict gun regulations. CT has very strict gun regulations. Furthermore, those people that really want to bring harm to others won't be stopped by strict gun regulations, in my experience, criminals tend NOT to follow laws, and its not as if there isn't a rampant illegal arms market from which people can buy guns.

Not a knee-jerk reaction at all. If she said that all guns must be banned tomorrow, that would be a knee-jerk reaction. However, she just mentioned the need for more laws controlling guns. Perhaps she means a ban on high-powered assault weapons, a limit on the number of guns a person can legally own, or a limit on number of rounds of ammunition one person can buy at one time. All things that have been talked about very much in recent years, not just in the light of terrible tragedies but just looking at America's rate of gun-related deaths compared to other developed countries.

Thank you for your thoughtful article Colleen. I personally think America should adopt a gun-free model similar to Japan--and have thought so long before this terrible rampage--but I'm a pragmatist, so for now I'll settle for stricter control of weapons. Wanting to make access to guns harder is not a knee-jerk reaction.

Because as we all know theres no such things as a bomb, knife, poisonous gas, or rigged death contraptions!!!

Wow. I actually find myself agreeing with Clyde! There are many components when someone commits such a devastating action. Immediately the talk turns to gun control yet nothing is said about the overwhelming problem this nation faces with the mentally ill. I cannot believe a sane person could walk into a kindergarten class and kill 20 children in cold blood, be it with a gun or some other weapon. The violence in our nation is a multi faceted problem and it's not a problem that will be cured by stricter gun control alone.

"it is clear that had the perpetrator not been able to get his hands on reportedly three, or possibly four, guns so easily, many if not all of the little ones would still be alive."

And IF our country had better mental health programs....or IF his mother had an abortion....or IF a meteor had fallen out of the sky and killed him...
We can play the if ifs and buts were candy and nuts game til the cows come home, it doesn't change what happened.

First off let me state that this was a tragedy and I like most everyone else feels terrible for the families of these poor souls. That said: What Firearm Law(s) do you think needs to be stricter Colleen? According the Brady Campaign, NJ has the 2nd strictest Firearms laws in the country, Connecticut is 5th. These are links to verify my information.
http://www.bradycampaign.org/stategunlaws/scorecard/NJ
http://www.bradycampaign.org/stategunlaws/scorecard/CT

Let me also share that I am a gun owner. My rifles are safely secured in Fireproof/Waterproof multiple locking bolt gun safe. My handgun is secured in a Biometric locking vault attached to my night stand. No one can access my firearms except me! This is how a responsible gun owner handles their firearms.

That being said, these are some of what I see as issues with Nancy Lanza's handling of her firearms. 1. She obviously did not secure them as was her responsibility. 2. She owned numerous illegal high capacity magazines (I've heard 30 rounds), NJ doesn't permit anything over 10 rounds. 3. She kept her guns in a home with a mentally disturbed son. 4. Whom she taught to handle and fire her guns. 5. She allowed him access to these firearms. I see a huge failure on Nancy Lanza's part, what I don't see were the Firearms Laws failed.

Lets lay the blame where it belongs for a change, with Nancy Lanza and her son Adam. Stop trying to blame all the law abiding Gun owners.

It is an unfortunate tradgedy how anyone could take so many inocent lives , this is a very complex issue . what could have been bruing in this sick individuals young mind ? Was he abused or mistreated ? Was he just overcome by evil ? Time will tell as his life history unfolds before the world .
however one of to worst mass murders in our country's history was when one hundred inocent people lost there lives in a bronx social club by a crazed boyfriend who had no access to a gun and used one gallon of gasoline to burn the club down .
This is not the time to force law abiding citizens to give up their right to protect their families . The gun laws on the books need to be enforced . Lets keep the guns away from crazy people . If you have a sick person in your home don't leave your guns unlocked .
Protect the law abiding citizens rights under the second ammendment to bare arms .

This tragedy was horrible.
Back to using it as a platform however, vehicles kill more people each year so lets outlaw cars first instead of doing away with our constitution.
Cars kill people.

Yes this was indeed a tragedy. But more gun controls are not the answer. Guns do not kill people; people kill people. We need more gun education. In Israel they teach their teachers how to use weapons to protect themselves and their students. If just one law abiding citizen had a weapon the fatalities may have been reduced. More gun controls take away our rights to defend ourselves.

This was a tragedy of the worst proportions and my heart goes out to the family and friends of the victims. On the other hand, I am ashamed of Obama showing up in CT to address the towns people and use the podium as yet another political opportunity, this time to advance his "gun control" ideology. When speaking to the group, he even used the word "politics". This was neither the time nor the place for this.

As mentioned above by many commentators, if not an assault rifle, then a knife or some other device to cause mayhem. Yes, mental health needs to be addressed as well. One area I'd be interested in knowing whether there have been any studies done addressing the relationship between such acts and violent video games. Think about it for a moment - commonalties between such events - young males, tragedies in public places, multiple horrific deaths, high powered weapons, disregard for human life. If you have a teenage male in your household, ask about his video games, or better yet, sit in on them with him. I submit in many cases these perpetrators are playing out in real life what they have seen for countless hours on a video screen.

it is so sad that even before the blood is dry the poliiticians are out in force.

How about this then.... when we conduct background checks for firearm purchases, we consider not just the background of the gun owner, but everytone who resides in the household where the gun will be kept.

This is totally about mental illness......not gun control.

Here's another aspect that wasn't mentioned-http://www.davekopel.com/2a/othwr/principal&gun.htm

Tell my why anyone outside of law enforcement or the military "needs" to own automatic or semi-automatic weapons? It was a semi-automatic Bushmaster rifle that did most of the killing. You want a gun for protection? Fine, own a handgun. You want to hunt? Get a shotgun. No civilian "needs" an M-16-type weapon.

The anti-gun vultures have decided to make this THE case that gets their agenda through, while people are panicked and saying "DO something !!" without thinking about what needs to be done. Just like Hitler used the Reichstag Fire to gain total control of the German people.

I think that Nancy Lanza's actions were irresponsible, and certainly made it possible for that disturbed young man to carry out his horrific actions. A sensible person never would leave guns within the reach of a dysfunctional person. Gun safes are available and not terribly expensive, and if you're worried about access in, for example, a home invasion, some of them have biometric locks,

Changing the gun laws -- which will certainly be Obama's and Feinstein's agenda -- won't do anything, except make it harder for law-abiding and sane citizens to own guns.

What we need more urgently - and what will address the real issues - is a change in the healthcare (and especially mental-health care) laws, so that people like Adam Lanza can be helped before they snap.

All very good points. I heartily agree with "guns don't kill people, people kill people." This evil, insane person would have found a way to do this deed or a similar one, no matter what laws were in play. He needed help--his family obviously ignored or were blind to his problems. I am a gun owner, there is a lot of paperwork, fingerprinting, visits to local police, etc., to navigate before you can actually bring the gun home. (Ed-my magazine holds 13 rounds.) On a larger scale, foreign "enemies" are very aware that Americans have the right to bear arms, and would be facing a very large, well-armed citizen army should they even think of invasion. We need to address the mental health problems, recognize them, treat them, to prevent these acts of violence. If you start chipping away at the Constitution and removing the rights of the people that thousands died, and are still dying for, the country will slide into anarchy. A gun-free model?! OMG, the criminals would have a field day!

Ed, good points, NJ has good gun contriol laws. But nationally, we need to make it illegal for semi/automatic weapons - no need for them.

My last comment is "pending approval" -- I wonder if "freedom of speech" applies on Patch, if one is disagreeing with the programmed agenda ?

I agree Colleen, if there was ever a time to talk about gun control it is now. There will be tragedies in the future, but I cannot imagine the killing of 26 innocent people in a school without these crazy weapons and ammunition. The founders of our country could never have foreseen that guns could take dozens of lives in minutes. Think of the heartbreak for these families, think about the cost to the medical system of gun violence, think of how these weapons make it so easy for someone to gravely injure themselves and others.

For a crime like this to happen requires a bunch things happening like a row of dominos - yes, better mental health services may have helped, more educational support may have helped, but I have no doubt that when all that fails and it does in many families - not having guns available would have meant all the world to those children and teachers. He may have committed suicide or killed his mother, but he wouldn't have been able to inflict such mass destruction.

If only the principal or one of the teachers had a gun with them, this all could have been different. Gun Laws need to allow our sane and law abiding citizens to protect themselves and our loved ones from those that are not. An honest assessment of this situation would have us investigating why none of those on staff at the school had their own gun, with nobody there to protect them.

If only the principal or one of the teachers had a gun with them, this all could have been different. Gun Laws need to allow our sane and law abiding citizens to protect themselves and our loved ones from those that are not. An honest assessment of this situation would include investigating the tragedy of why none of those on staff at the school had their own gun, with nobody there to protect them.

A quick observation: quite a few posters have indicated that there is no reason for gun owners to use semi-automatic or automatic weapons to "defend" themselves. I would like to hear guns owners' response to that, other than people kill people which after a while gets old.

Crazy people and criminals will always find a way to get a weapon or make one. The question is how well we will allow the sane and honest people in society to protect themselves from those criminals and nuts. Sure it would be terrific if there were no guns or crime or anything bad in the world. But there will always be devices to explode or shoot projectiles, and we need to make sure that wishing away crime or guns doesn't result in more laws that hurt the chances of sane and honest adults from protecting themselves and the young.

The only thing that happens when you make a weapon-free zone, is that bad people with weapons then have a major advantage. The bad guys and crazy people can always get those weapons in there.

Its critical that the knee-jerk reaction isn't followed, which is to prevent the good guys from having protection from the nuts and criminals that will always be in the world. Making it tougher for honsest sane people to protect ourselves, our families, and our young, will only make it worse.

The types of guns that a person owns will not make any difference. Wether it is fully auto or semi-auto or single round is not going to change anything. Saying that everyone should be able to carry is actually more of a scary subject to me. All we need are a handful of people with guns who don't know how to use it. Instead of saying you cannot own this or that, how about it is mandatory that you pass a yearly test with every weapon you own. Be able to take it apart and clean it and be able to hit the center of a target at X yards 90% of the time. if you don't pass, you don't get to keep it. Also, make it mandatory that you have to go to a certified shooting range to use the weapon ever 3 months. And at your expense. Yearly inspections that you have the correct storage available at your home like locked safes. If there are others in your home, they must have a license and follow the same rules, even if it is your gun. If you want the gun, learn how to use it and respect it.

GUNS are NOT THE PROBLEM, PEOPLE are THE PROBLEM!!!!!

He could have came in there with a knife, a bomb or whatever. When someone gets in a car accident, we don't blame the vehicle for hitting someone else, we blame the driver.

Guns are only bad when bad people have them. We just have to keep the crazy people away from, not only guns, but anything else that they can hurt people with.

Norway a country where guns are illegal had a mad man run around and shoot 85 kids last year at a summer camp. The mad man went around the camp shooting his victims for an hour and half, like he was hunting. Guns are illegal in Norway and nobody could stop him!

Doug - look at statistics. America has more gun violence/death than the next 38 industrialized countries put together.

You Americans have a sick and demented love affair with guns and violence and you end up getting the inevitable results.

MORE MENTAL HEALTH AND COUNSELING should be the main lesson learned here. Sorry to shout, but that's FAR more important than a gun control debate. For someone to have done this, there must have been many warning signs.

Guns are not Cars, in any sense. If you would agree to title, register and insure them the same way, as well as licensing owners now we'd be getting somewhere.

People do kill people, often as not, they do it with guns. We have better laws controlling explosives, poisons and even knives than we do governing the use and sale of guns.

The arm the schools? So every school is a dodge city in miniature? Good one. Armed people are not necessarily competent, besides I really don't want my kids living in a world of armed encampments, do you guys?

P.S. Other countries won't attack us because we have nuclear weapons, not because we have an over-armed populace.

Mental health is the argument but so are guns, get used to it.

http://qz.com/37015/how-school-killings-in-the-us-stack-up-against-36-other-countries-put-together/ a little reality for Doug

IF we are going to legislate changes to reduce the chance that this sort of horrific even will re-occur, we need to demonstrate how the change would have stopped the event.... AND... we need to demonstrate that the law could be implemented and enforced without creating a bigger problem. To date, I have not heard a gun control proposal that meets the two point test I've just outlined...

Intelligent people do not blame inanimate objects for the actions of a deranged person. I do not own any firearms nor have I ever fired one, but I do know that moral and just societies do not punish all for the actions of one

As long as American police forces are allowed to operate as para-military units, we all need to be heavily armed.

http://i2.cdn.turner.com/cnn/dam/assets/121216080250-02-newtown-1216-horizontal-gallery.jpg

It's not about guns or more laws. I've owned guns for 35yrs, including an assault style (no selector switch) AR. It's scary black with a pistol grip...eeew...that's even more scary. I don't hunt and my guns have never killed anything ever. It's not about capacity, because one bullet kills! It's not about hollow point ammo v. ball ammo (BTW ball ammo will go through things and will keep on going! DA Politicians and DA anti-gunners don't know that). And BTW, if your intention was to cause close quarter mass damage you be better off w/ a 12 ga. and 00 buck not an assault style AR. Because there is no real aiming. You just point, pull, and (9) 38 cal. pellets comes spraying out at once.
The problem here is nut jobs walking around and not in hospitals (thank you ACLU), parents not allowed to discipline (thank you ACLU), parents and teachers not teaching responsibility and making everyone a winner (thank you again ACLU and liberals), lazy doctors dispensing ritalin like candy, no religion, and the breakup of family, etc. It's not knives, baseball bats, lead pipes, cars, trains, poison, wood chippers, chain saws, or guns! Just one more thing you should know, the military added a 3 round burst option to their assault weapons. They found full auto wasted a lot of ammo and wasn't accurate!

A gun ban would not have prevented the worst mass school murders in our history. The perp didn't use a gun. For those lamenting a deteriorating society, it also occur when your parents OR perhaps grandparents where the age of these children. Perhaps something to consider while proposing a gun control solution that won't works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bath_School_disaster

assault rifle / weapon? Semantic trickery to win an argument subjectively rather than objectively. All guns are assault weapons.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OyS3CEIbpJo
Results of the Forced buy back of Australia.

Chris is right. "Guns don't kill people. People kill people." PEOPLE WITH GUNS!!! And the faster their guns shoot, the more people they can kill Chris.

Spokey is right. The worst killing of elementary school kids was the Bath killing in 1927 which a crazed man used bombs not guns. Guns don't kill people, people kill people.

Citizen Jane...it's actually really helpfull to have a discussion based on facts not emotions. If you are tired of living in America you should move instead of trying to trample on the rights of other people just so YOU can feel better. You can go to Darfur or Sierra Leonne, how about Mexico ? In Mexico no citizens are allowed to own guns, and approximately 55000 have died from gun violence in the last 10 years. That law is working out really well for them huh ?

Chicago has some of the toughest guns laws In America...and the highest murder rate by guns.

DC has the same problem.

Those are facts Citizen Jane...FACTS !

Just for the record, I did not insult anyone. I simply made a statement that for some reason you decided to take personally. I guess I should loose my 1st Amendment rights now huh ?

Dear Patch,

People like you are part of the problem and not the solution. Hopefully someday you will grow up and educate yourself enough to have an honest debate based on facts and not emotions.

Please delete my original post as well as my account and ban my IP address since I will not be using you in the future.

Hey I've got a good one!! I'm from PL and I talked to my dad who's still there, if anything like that happened there or at least something similar he said no cause its a lot harder for us to get a hold of guns or weapons this dangerous!!! So that's one, on the other hand I compared PL meds to US meds and they're a lot different on PL meds you don't always have side effects on some very little and not too dangerous, on US meds we have side effects, every single one!! Some are really dangerous some are less but the point is that a lot of meds mess with our brains and drive us nuts i know normal people who after taking meds went nuts: depression, bipolar ect I think just think that US mess are dangerous to people and America should work on it!! I also want to say that i can't imagine the pain that people who lost their family member in that shooting are feeling Right now and I'm verry sorry for what happened and I hope we can get through this somehow :-(

There are enough laws already in force that are violated each and every time one of these murders takes place to prove that legislation is not the solution to murderers' illegal use of guns.

The solution is to neutralize the potential threat. A properly trained, armed, and licensed citizenry would serve to prevent most of these events, or at the very least reduce their extensiveness. IF adults were allowed to protect themselves by being armed, criminals would hesitate to commit gun crime. And, if criminals do engage in physical personal violence they would be met with lethal, and perhaps greater force, to prevent mass murder. The proof of reduction in physical harm when adults are appropriately armed has been published in authoritative professional literature by well known professors such as Dr. John Lott.

We need less invasive government, more individual accountability, and stricter and faster justice by the courts at earlier ages. If this government regulation to prevent citizens from protecting themselves is not eliminated, vigilante justice may soon result.

If you're truly interested in stopping the murder of children, stop abortion. American women have murdered 50,000,000 unborn babies.

Could it be just guns or mental health? One name comes to mind.... "Timothy Mcveigh".

There isn't a reason in the world why we can't work on access to mental health AND gun control. There isn't really a good reason why people need semi-automatic weapons and enormous ammunition clips, unless they want to kill lots of people (or play at it). There are lots of good reasons for reasonable people to support restricting those weapons and forms of ammunition, and lots and lots of reasonable people are calling for it. Yeah...people kill people. People who don't have semi-automatic weapons can't kill as many. And that's a great start.

This article is hyperbole. Likely all that it would take is to replace a 6-figure janitor with a semi-retired police officer and conduct a state-wide security audit of schools ... but we seem to have our priorities elsewhere such that we can't defend the defenseless.

It still leaves one question.... his footprint was taken at birth and has been tracked everyday in our new society, our children are taught in a loving, no fear of failure system, by passing the ? headache to the next expert..every day of his life,, still no one knows anything about him.? everyone from nursery school on should be interviewed, every note should be looked at, then maybe the puzzle can solved, taught to the parent/professionals/teachers who should have seen this coming. The gun/guns, were just tools used by a madman.

To be fair. Since the editors of the Journal News like to publish addresses of people who own guns, here, in turn, are the publishers addresses and phone numbers, one of whom actually owns a gun too!

Janet Hasson, 3 Gate House Rd, Mamaroneck, NY 10534. (248) 594-2197

Cyndee Royle, 1133 Westchester Ave., Suite N110, White Plains, NY 10604, 914-694-9300

Nancy Cutler 9 Woodwind Ln, Spring Valley, NY. (845) 354 3485

The CEO of the parent company is
Gannett CEO
Gracia C Martore
728 Springvale Rd
Great Falls, VA 22066
(703) 759 5954

The reporter on the story is
Dwight R Worley
23006 139 Ave
Springfield Gardens, NY 11413 (718) 527 0832

Side note the Journal News reporter Dwight R Worley the parasitic Liberal Communist traitor to Americans, is a gun owner himself. Dwight R. Worley owns a Smith & Wesson 686 .357 Magnum and has had a residence permit in New York City for that weapon since February 2011

Gotta teach kids gun safety ahead of time http://www.airsplat.com/airsoft-safety.htm

As anyone that knows me will tell you, I love debate!

I take issue with the whole "Gun Control" & "Assualt Rifle" thing...when what we really need is people control.

I don't know if you personally are interested in FBI statistics, but the facts are startling, and not in the way you'd imagine! Forget the NRA, when someone brings-up any study sponsored by them, it's immediately discounted as lies no-matter how factual it really is...so lets not use any! OK, FBI study results...

FBI's annual crime statistics, which tracks murders and murder weapons...
In 2011, almost 13,000 people were murdered with a weapon. Of those, 1700 people were killed with knives; almost 500 were killed with hammers, bats, and clubs; and 728 were killed by another's bare hands. Statistics show only 323 people were killed with rifles. That's just 2.5 percent of all weapon-related murders.

Uh...that number is with ALL types of rifles and unfortunately, the FBI either does not or will not release the impossibly small number of deaths caused by the so called "Assault Rifles".

Here's a little something to think about.
The largest number of murders involving firearms, are in cities and municipalities with the most stringent "Gun Control" laws and it hasn't done a thing to stop the crimes.

So what would work?
Well, it hasn't had the option of being tried yet, but how about doing away with "Plea Bargaining"?

Continued from my comment...

Patrick Edward Purdy, and if you don't remember the name, google it.

He was the first biggie and the one that started the rant against semi-automatic firearms...but here's the problem. In his life he was arrested several times and each time that he should have been sentenced as a felon, his charges were plea-bargained down to misdemeanors by the liberal system. He was never convicted for a crime that would have forbid his ability to purchase or have in his possession a firearm. If he was adjudicated properly for his crimes, he would have been found guilty of a felony or found to be mentally ill, either of which would have prevented him from legally possessing any firearm.

Background checks and more laws wouldn't have worked in Purdy's case or ANY of the cases that followed simply because the liberal court system refuses to use the tools at their disposal. The hundreds of gun laws are useless if the courts continue to allow the rampant use of plea bargaining...and that's also how we have so many "repeat offenders". Liberal courts are mostly caused by liberal politicians who are elected by, you guessed it...liberal voters...who are indeed the ones who cry the loudest about gun violence. They cause the problem and then whine about it...go figure.

A last bit of the "continued"...sorry to be so long-winded!

You can't stuff the firearms genie back into the bottle, but you can work to help solve the problem or lessen the effect of bad courts, ineffective laws, and uninformed voters.

A liberal will decry the judgment of the mentally ill as dangerous, until they kill children, and then they cry to the heavens! A liberal will moan about the over-crowding of jails, and instead of building more...they support early release programs.

Is a gun to blame here? Or is a liberal society? If the people that are indeed menaces to society were placed where they could do no harm, or other-wise rendered harmless, this country would be a safer place. The liberal will always worry more about a persons rights than their "wrongs" and until that changes, all the gun laws and restrictions in the world will amount to nothing...

It would be good if we could leave a comment to answer an article, using the same number of characters AS the article...I copied and pasted this article, that we commented on into the "comment box" and this was the result:

"3935 characters too many!
Easy there, Tolstoy. Your comment cannot exceed 1500 characters."

"Freedom of the Press" should include us too, for fair and balanced reactions...just an after-thought!

It's good to see most here value their rights under the US Constitution and not some political movement to have them stripped. A bullet has no conscience and neither does a crazed maniac. IMO, it's shameful for a political agenda to use a tradgic incident as their means.

obviously the people againt guns have not been in a life threatning situation themselves.....limit rounds, who are you to say how many rounds I need? It is presumed Always that it would be one on one....what if 7 people are comming at you and you have 6 shots? It is not about guns, it is about control.......gun control is your index finger!

Why did the shooters pick the locations that they picked?

That's simple Larry...like you didn't really WANT me to answer your question...

The locations were easy, undefended targets, meant to maximize the body-count, shock value, and the pain and suffering that goes along with it.