The test of the good guy with the pen will be if the bad guy with the gun is stopped.

The regulations the president is proposing include better assessments of the mentally ill.

Such an assessment puts a fine line between the insane and the sane.

It also gives the person who is making that decision more power than most gun owners would want me to have if I were the one doing the assessing.

Highly skilled training of the use of a weapon does not reduce the number of people who kill once they have reached a breaking point and go after their victims.

You can find them in the armed forces killing the innocent just as much as you can find them in schools shooting the innocent.

The truth is that “all we can do is all we can do” will never be enough for a good guy with a pen to stop all bad guys with guns. And that’s whether bad guys are mentally ill, or as sane as you and me.

A better approach would be to strengthen the character development of children so that we don’t find the same pattern in these school shootings — the shooter, previously being bullied by one’s peers until he feels as though he is an outcast.

Marvin Purser, Hollywood