Will Killings Spark New Gun Laws?
Updated: 4:43pm UK, Monday 17 December 2012
By Greg Milam, US Correspondent
There has probably never been a time when talk of gun control has been so loud in the United States, but will those words be turned into action?
Barack Obama is under pressure to provide some specifics to back up his powerful statements over the weekend.
The promise from the California Senator Diane Feinstein, a long time gun control advocate, to introduce a bill to reinstate the lapsed ban on assault weapons is certainly a sign of concrete action.
But the views of Republican congressman Pete King are instructive. He supports that assault weapon ban but does not believe the political will exists to pass it.
Outside of the northeast of the US, he says, a gun culture exists that will stand in the way of any new laws.
The noises coming from members of Congress on both sides of the aisle are equally gloomy.
It may be up to individual states to change their laws and some, like Colorado, are already taking steps to tighten regulations.
But recent months have seen action only in the other direction: a succession of moves by states to loosen gun laws.
So when the Brady Campaign, the most high-profile gun control lobby in the US, says that what happened in Newtown means the response this time this "will be different", what stands in the way of action?
Certainly the National Rifle Association is a powerful voice of opposition to any new laws. That is nothing new.
But it is the view of a large slice of the American population that is just as significant and it is a view that people in the UK and Europe often simply do not "get".
The Second Amendment of the US Constitution is popularly said to contain the "right to bear arms" and Americans fiercely defend that right.
The pro-gun activists who have spoken in recent days have repeated a familiar line: that it is not guns that kill but people.
Others have expressed the belief that more guns are the answer, giving people the chance to defend themselves in the face of criminal action. Mass killings, they say, often happen in places where guns are banned.
If the head teacher at Sandy Hook had a gun, one politician said, the massacre might not have happened.
Those are not fringe views. There is a reason why there are 89 guns for every 100 people in the United States.
As with the death penalty, religion and healthcare, there is sometimes a gulf between perspectives on either side of the Atlantic.
Guns are a part of American life and nothing is going to change that.
In Newtown, Mr Obama promised action - but did not mention guns. It could be on background checks, on mental health, on violence in movies and video games.
He has to do something - show "leadership", as New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg says - or he cannot possibly live up to that promise.
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