No, but it certainly helped.

I think he would have had a tougher time committing the same crime with a spoon.

The rest of the statistics are a smoke screen. The problem is violence and more specifically, gun violence.

Additional problems: An outdated, misinterpreted, misused and overused 2nd Amendment. Add to that the "Stand your ground" and "concealed weapon" idiocy.

What about this is incomprehensible? If you're a farmer and need a rifle for varmints, or a hunter providing food for your family you'll be screened for mental health issues. If you're ok...no problem. If not, you get treatment and when ok, no problem.

Everyone else? You have no need. The risk/benefit ratio says "No". Therefore "No". You're caught with an unlicensed weapon, you will REALLY regret it. End of story.

Read this:  http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/15/nyregion/after-newtown-shooting-running-and-hoping-to-find-a-child-safe.html?ref=nyregion&_r=1&

Feel something besides, "I want/need a gun." Feel the terror those instruments of killing engender in normal people.

"Enough is enough."

Bang! Nail on the head!

Doc.. try to look at other peoples points of view...a little more.. off with the blinders... Ur point of view.. isnt. the only point of view.

It is.. not.. black and white.

God forbid someone does come at you, or someone you love, with a gun one day.

Im done in this thread.

You are entitled to your point of view, v. I'll fight to the death to protect that. 

But not a gun.

Someone came at 20 kids...20 someones someone loved... with a gun.

Gun ownership did not help them.

Frankly there is no other 'point of view'.

All the chest-beating aside [yes, mine too], here's what you all need to think about.

Think of that cute/lovely nephew, neice, son, daughter, rug-rat ... the one everyone loves...but now not coming home from school again.  The sense of loss.

It's profound.

Now, do it again...for his/her classmate you met once or twice maybe.  Not coming home.

Then...again....the one he/she mentioned you hadn't met yet....and now won't.

....and 17 more.

There IS no understanding of how it happened....just as there is no understanding of how a society could be sufficiently flawed for it to happen.

Blame whom-ever you will.  Nothing reverses the reality.

People on 'any' side of a proverbial fence need to wake up a little and DO SOMETHING to try to guarantee it does not happen again.

Only you can decide, but I can assure you that WHEN it is closer to [your] home your stance will be tested.

Last week, 5 people died in a 'car crash' on the Geelong freeway.....6 young [to me] people in one car coming back from a party..... and one driver on the wrong side of a divided freeway apparently trying suicide-by-car [succeeding].  She died...but so did 4 people I'd met, one of whom was connected family-wise [indirectly]...she's dead at 24....survived by children. [nephew's wife's sister]

Real trauma happens.  That's life.  It's a responsible adult's obligation to ensure such things are as minimal as humanly possible.

If you really think more guns in public [uncontrolled] hands is a good thing then fine...go for it, but I will remain sceptical.

Connecticut already has the 5th toughest gun control laws in the country. More laws is not the answer but maybe better enforcement of the ones on the books is.

You can debate the need for tougher gun control laws if you want but before you decide that outlawing guns is the answer, here are a few thousand stories of how guns saved lives and provided home invasion protection.

From the NRA ? ....seriously?

You don't think it just may be a wee bit BIASED?

Snorting cocaine is good for you [so says some cartel in Colombia]  too....

Society is the problem. Fix the people. Fix the system that cares for the people.

Anyone in their right mind wouldn't commit such heinous crimes. (Fix the people.)  If he hadn't used guns, he would have found another weapon. (The spoon thing is ridiculous.)

Remember 9/11 and the boxcutter gang?  Just one case in point.

It ain't the guns, it's the people.

I'm done here too. This thread was about the little ones being needlessly slaughtered and has become a soapbox for gun control.

Yep. Society got into that school and shot the hell out of the kiddies.

Try this on for size, Jim: http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/12/14/1337551/michigan-guns-classroom/?mobile=nc

There is pro's and con's on both sides and strong beliefs.  Just like everything else there is no winners however it turns out.

Good idea!

The best possible scenario for gun criminals is to disarm everyone else, good idea!!!!  I'll vote for that, not.

One more thing. I realize this isn't my call, but this thread has become a political thread, which isn't supposed to be taking place here in this particular forum, if I'm not mistaken.

Could it possibly get back on topic?

I'm sorry, I was/AM done here...

A better one would be to bring the Second Amendment to relevance. That's what the Constitution is designed to do: To be flexible enough to change and not break.

This thread was an open invitation to all to speak their minds and hearts with civility. I'm perfectly satisfied that each might have his own soap box.

Doesn't wash/hold water/make sense!  With no guns in society, period, the gutless wonders who invade others homes would likely not be doing so... not without the gun that gives them the balls they otherwise lack. Okay, there may be exceptions to the rule, there always are, and the pro-gun wackos use this to justify gun ownership, but the fact is, the incidence of violent home invasion is going to decrease dramatically if the tools of trade [guns] are made unavailable to all except the military and police.

Besides, how the fuck is a home owner shooting and killing an intruder saving life?  Regardless of whether that person was committing crime or not, he was still somebody's son; brother; nephew; grandson; uncle, etc, etc, and it is no less tragic for those family members to have lost a loved one by gunfire. No, you do not save life by killing, no matter how you want to paint it/dress it up.

The simple solution is, take the gun out of the equation entirely, then the intruder is unlikely to be there, and the home owner has no need to shoot him.  That's how you save lives... not by placing the instruments of death in the hands of anyone who can do harm, whether it be murder or self defence, deliberate or accidental.

And before any of you says "what would you know about it down there in Australia and what right have you to tell us, I don't have to be American to see the stupidity of it all and feel compassion for the slain and their families.  And what Right do I or any other outsiders have?  Perhaps none, but look at the fucking mess Americans have made of it over the last 400 or so years of this inalienable right to bear arms.... millions of innocent people gunned down in cold blood... not one or two here or there... fucking millions... ALL DEAD because of some twisted notion that guns save lives.  So do rattlesnakes [their venom is used medicinally] but you wouldn't want the bastards loose in your community.

In closing, because I'll not comment in this thread again, and this is aimed at NO particular person, but I am mystified and deeply disappointed at the lack of compassion and common sense being displayed here. 27 more people, 20 of them kids under 10, have been senselessly gunned down in a flurry of bullets, yet there's still this pro-gun "it's my right to carry a gun" thing going on... blah, blah, blah.  Put bluntly, it just makes me sick to my stomach and my opinion.....

One more thing. I realize this isn't my call, but this thread has become a political thread, which isn't supposed to be taking place here in this particular forum, if I'm not mistaken.

Indeed it isn't; you are, and it isn't a political thread.

It was a moral issue thread when you started it, gun control is a political issue. Done for real, this time.