Like a lot of kids who grew up in the mountains of Northern California I also grew up around guns, hunting rifles, shotguns and the occasional pistol. After saving up during my twelfth year I bought a beautiful .243 to go along with my newly granted hunting privileges and because my firefighter stepfather was a gunsmith by avocation, one of my chores after doing the dishes was to reload shotgun shells and bullets to earn my weekly allowance. Along with all that came the safety drills and hunter training courses and even after I decided I just couldn’t kill that deer after all, I remained an excellent shot.

When my Marine son John consistently won the coveted expert rifleman designation during his service I always assure him I would best him with a long rifle between 300 and 500 yards. “Sure mom,” he always laughs with a wink. “Sure”. My interest in guns waned long ago but like many veterans John has acquired quite a collection weapons since his honorable discharge and blows through hundreds of dollars in ammunition at the shooting range every month. He just likes guns, he says, and points out that in Iraq guns saved his life more than once but even he remarks at how easy it is for a veteran like himself, diagnosed with TBI and severe PTSD, to walk into a store in Oregon and purchase a weapon.

The suspect in the Connecticut shooting is believed to have suffered from multiple personality disorders, and the suspects in Arizona, Colorado and other mass shootings had been diagnosed with schizophrenia, a crippling disease that causes auditory hallucinations and paranoid delusions and typically becomes acutely manifest in the late teens and early twenties, particularly among males.

The Connecticut shooter, Adam Lanza, is reported to have used weapons stolen from his mother but as my son explains, he bought three Glock .45s, one each for his brothers for Christmas last year, with complete ease. Perhaps there needs to be tighter coordination between mental health professionals and weapons licensing and sales.