Appeals to emotionalism aren’t, in the long run, very useful – an assault weapons ban would *not* have stopped Adam Lanza, (you do realize that assault weapons are banned in CT, right?) any more than it would have had no impact on Seung-Hui Cho or Jared Loughner.

He would simply have used the other weapons at his disposal, which would have been just as, or even more deadly than the rifle he apparently used. Holmes wounded 71 people, but fired fewer than 30 rounds from his “assault rifle” – the rest were shotgun pellets and handgun rounds. Fortunately, he chose not to use the gasoline/grenades he had at his apartment, or things could have even been more horrific.

You know this – usually when people make policy out of emotion, they’re solving the last problem, not the next – but you’re not even doing that. The larger point is how do we keep weapons capable of causing mass casualties out of the hands of those with emotional and cognitive problems? How do we monitor them? Why didn’t his mother recognize his potential for such an act? Should she have? And for God’s sakes, why did she allow someone with his problems access to guns and ammunition?

The common thread of these shootings is mentally ill people getting hold of guns – and perhaps more to the point, people around them failed utterly to take any kind of preventive action. Major Hassan’s beliefs and actions were completely inappropriate for an officer in the U.S. Army, yet he was passed along, with deadly results. Cho’s family knew he was disturbed – they were happy he was out of the house – and so did the justice system. Loughner’s family knew he was crazy, and probably of his obsession with Giffords, but did nothing. It’s pretty clear that people around Holmes knew he was becoming dangerous, but again, did nothing, except, perhaps protect themselves, (but not others.)

Every one of these acts were committed by people who were known to others to be unstable and disturbed. Yet, because it’s people’s “right to be crazy”, they were left to hatch their murderous schemes without interruption, and to acquire weapons.

If Lanza were just a year older, he could have bought his own weapons – why wasn’t he registered as “mentally defective” (the CT legislature’s term, not mine), to prevent the purchase of weapons? Not that this would have stopped him, either – except that, in the wake of this, I’d certainly want to consider some legislation on gun ownership to those who are parents of, or co-habitate with “mental defectives”.

Jack….I know that you haven’t forgotten…Liberalism , itself, is a mental disease. It alters forever any smidgeon of common sense from entering the thought stream.