To see how complex the issue of guns is, read this article about Newtown CT

[hack89]

People in the rural, hilly areas around Newtown, Conn., are used to gunfire. In one woodsy stretch, southeast of downtown, the Pequot Fish and Game Club and the Fairfield County Fish and Game Protective Association, where members can fish in ponds and hunt pheasant, lie within a mile of each other, and people who live nearby generally call them good neighbors.

Yet recent efforts by the police chief and other town leaders to gain some control over the shooting and the weaponry turned into a tumultuous civic fight, with traditional hunters and discreet gun owners opposed by assault weapon enthusiasts, and a modest tolerance for bearing arms competing with the staunch views of a gun industry trade association, the National Shooting Sports Foundation, which has made Newtown its home.

The place that witnessed one of the worst mass killings in United States history on Friday, leaving 20 schoolchildren and 8 adults dead, is a bucolic New England town comfortable with its firearms, and not an obvious arena for the nation’s debate over gun control. But the legislative battle right here shows how even the slightest attempts to impose restrictions on guns can run into withering resistance, made all the more pointed by the escalation in firepower.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/17/nyregion/in-newtown-conn-a-stiff-resistance-to-gun-restrictions.html?ref=nyregion&_r=0

It will be interesting to see if the shooting changes attitudes in Newtown.

[DanM]

1. So, the moral is . . .

. . . live by the gun, die by the gun?

Note: not meant to be insensitive. I'm sickened by the gun violence, and just giving my honest take on the OP.

[hack89]

3. It shows a different picture of gun owners

then the one being trumpeted here at DU.

Here we have affluent northeastern town full of well educated professions that is also pro-gun.

[reformist2]

2. That article makes a lot of the people in the town sound like nutjobs!

Just one excerpt:

Some of the complaints raised another issue. Gun enthusiasts here, as elsewhere in the country, have taken to loading their targets with an explosive called Tannerite, which detonates when bullets strike it, sending shock waves afield. A mixture of ammonium nitrate and aluminum powder, Tannerite is legal in Connecticut, but safety concerns led Maryland this year to ban it.

[Demit]

4. I don't understand what you mean by the word complex.

And I read the story.