Thank you all for your kind and not so kind responses. Every discussion like this, including the swearing, is helpful to me. I undergo a daily barrage from a slew of surrounding liberals and I found myself at a loss for tact and talent when it came to these two proposals. It's hard to be the guy in the room who says "sometimes 20 six-year-olds die, and that's a cost of freedom." I guess I should have just fallen back on hard line freedom under the Constitution.

On the current issue of parentage, I find it hard to believe we can really put this on parents who didn't drop their kids at Auschwitz Daycare. Take Lanza herself. The other boy has no similar issues (that we know of). As the brother of a mentally retarded sister, there are definitely challenges faced dealing with special needs/ mentally disturbed children. My sister has none of the work ethic myself and my other siblings have. My parents strove to raise her as normally as the rest of us (her capacity is diminished but not altogether incompetent) but the lessons seem not to have taken hold. Is that because my parents dropped the ball? Or is it a larger issue of the message simply meeting an impermeable mind. I think the latter, but I'm no ATF approved psychiatrist.