There won't be any significant change in gun control laws.  The democrats never seem to have the political will and pandering Repubulicans are too beholden and afraid of the NRA.  It's a sad reality.  

.. and with a forty-eight hour news cycle the media won't focus on it either.

This may become the defining moment for this country. If something isn`t done to ban the types of weapons that have zero use to defend one`s self or family, or for the purpose of hunting, then we as a country are little better than the Afghanistans of the world. The second amendment says we have the right to bear arms, not the type of arms. Does anyone think the founding fathers would have approved these mass killing weapons if they were writing the bill of rights today?

While there is no basis, constitutional or otherwise, for stockpiling assault weapons, including semi-automatic ones, along with high-capacity ammunition magazines, there is a larger, more important issue. We have emptied out and closed our hospitals that were set up to care for those with psychotic conditions, and the threshold for involuntary hospitalization and medication is set impossibly high. 

So called assault rifles with 30 round magazines have no place in gun sports.  Although I have fundimental differences with the NRA, it does do some good.  They support weapons and hunter safety training for everyone, as do I.  It is time for the National ban on assualt rifles to be re-implemented.  It shpuld never have been allowed to expire.

The New York Times article pointed out that Newtown was the home of the gun industry trade association and that there were many shooting ranges, both formal and informal, in the town. Shooters also liked to add explosives to their targets, so that when hit the targets would explode loudly. All this noise of gunfire frightened many residents but they were powerless against the gun-nut lobby in getting any controls enacted or enforced. I wonder - I should not hope for this, I know, but it is too tempting - whether any of these gun manufacturers' trade association staff or the gun nuts had children killed in the school.

The police chief deserves some scrutiny. Why were permits issued to this woman who had an asperger's child and no training regarding securing of her weapons? And why did she need two pistols and a high capacity rifle?

Why do people ask the question "why does someone need that kind of gun?" It's a ridiculous question. People collect all sorts of things, guns included. AR 15 rifles are used in shooting competitions all over the country. When we can purchase only what we need, the economy is in a whole lot of trouble.

For all of those who think that we should create laws based on what others "need", you had better hope that the .gov doesn't decide you do not need:

16 oz drinks

Beer

Alchohol

A car if you live within two miles of work

To be more than 10 pounds overweight

A 3,000 sq ft home

An SUV

etc, etc

It really doesn't matter what people feel, today or any day, about guns.  The issue has been decided long ago.  The business of America is business, as they say, and the gun industry is very big business.  There are more gun sellers in the USA than there are MacDonald's franchises.  Within a ten mile radius of the Sandy Hook School, there are 36 registered gun sellers!  The industry is way, way too integrated into American culture to change it significantly.

 

This will all blow over, just like every one of these "massacres" do.  The popular will is not to ban or even significantly restrict guns.  For far too many Americans, these massacres are the price of freedom -- their freedom to own guns without restrictions.  They're a kind of "collateral damage" in the defense of freedom.  Too many Americans believe that gun deaths happen somewhere else, to someone else, and will never happen to them -- and they're pretty much correct.  So, why change anything, right?

why are these young kids - aged 20-24 - performing such acts? Gabby Gifford, Colorado, Oregon and now NewTown...

In March 2011, the NRA organized a so-called "grass roots" campaign to send over 30,000 emails to CT state legislators to kill a CT bill that would have made it illegal to possess a gun magazine in CT with more than 10 bullets.  The Newtown shooter's mother would have had to change the 30-bullet magazines of the Bushmaster assault weapon used to kill all those children.  Her son would have had to use 10 bullet magazines instead.  It is likely that had that bill been in place, fewer children would have died in this tragedy.