As I watched a black limousine bearing a grieving family go by with a police escort on Tuesday, I thought back two decades, to a time when four children were killed by stray bullets during a nine-day period in New York. The victims had included a 9-month-old in a walker. None of it had roused more than passing attention from some of us in the local press.

My own daughter, Sinead, not yet in kindergarten, was toddling just ahead of me on a Brooklyn street when an argument between some teens at the corner escalated directly into gunfire.

My impulse was to throw myself on top of her, but the gunfire had already ended. I remember running my hands over her, panicked she had been shot, as relieved as I could ever be when it was clear she had not.

Of course it’s reasonable to talk about practicing basic human decency in this process, especially when the news begins to be less about the immediate facts of a terrible event and more about the aftermath of that event. I agree fully with those who are disgusted by reporters barging into funeral services and sticking their microphones and voice-recorders into mourners’ faces. But I think we can separate our abhorrence of such behavior from our obligation to cover the story as fully and as deeply as possible.

On an emotional level I understand why many residents of Newtown would like the media to leave. They have just experienced perhaps the most awful thing a community can experience, and they are consumed mostly with getting through it, as they should be. They have no obligation to talk to any of us in the press, and I don’t begrudge them their irritation or anger at us. But at the same time, their grief, their anger, the range of their human emotions—all of it is a part of this terrible story. If we declare that we won’t cover this out of “respect” for the grieving families, what are we really saying?

I’d much sooner be rid of the checkout-counter paparazzi, who truly produce no news value, than I would tell real working journalists to back off describing every aspect of one of the biggest and most complicated stories of the past several years. Gun violence includes many things, death and destruction among them, but it equally includes the grief of those left behind. It is our job to tell all of that, and at the same time, to treat the subjects of our stories like the vulnerable humans they are. I don’t think it’s hard to do both of these things at once.

“In some public schools we already have uniformed officers who have guns,” he told The Daily Beast. “We don’t have a lot of money to take every [police officer] off the streets, but we have to be prudent and take some measures.”

Marshall said his bill would require those who bring guns to schools to meet state police standards in competency, and he disputed claims made by some in the press that his measure would force teachers and other school employees to carry guns against their will.

“You don’t take some 100-pound lady who doesn’t like guns and force them into doing. There are plenty of military personnel who are working in schools as teachers or administrators or in some other capacity,” he said.

As the 2008 campaign wore on, Obama was far more likely to offer words of reassurance to gun enthusiasts than tout his views on limiting access to weapons. Typical were his remarks at a September rally in Lebanon, Va.: “You’ve heard it here; I’m on television, so everybody knows it. I believe in the Second Amendment. I believe in people’s lawful right to bear arms. I will not take your shotgun away. I will not take your rifle away. I will not take your handgun away.” Obama talked about supporting “common-sense gun safety laws,” but he didn’t mention the assault-weapons ban.

After the election, Obama inherited an economic crisis of staggering proportions. As the White House confronted epic decisions, including a stimulus bill, bailing out the banks and whether to rescue the auto industry, officials were desperate to avoid controversial issues that could—in their view—squander their precious political capital. But Eric Holder Jr., the new attorney general, had not gotten the message. At a press conference in which he was announcing a major drug bust against a Mexican cartel, Holder stumbled into the politics of guns. Asked about the administration’s position on regulating weapons, Holder said, “Well, as President Obama indicated during the campaign, there are just a few gun-related changes that we would like to make, and among them would be to reinstitute the ban on assault weapons.” Holder, obliquely acknowledging that the president had a lot on his plate, was careful to add a cautionary note about how quickly the White House would get to the issue. “There are obviously a number of things…that have been taking up a substantial amount of [Obama’s] time, so I’m not exactly sure what the sequencing would be.” All Holder had done was to reiterate the new president’s campaign position. But the damage was done.

The remarks caught fire with National Rifle Association and its water carriers on Capitol Hill. The White House could tolerate a certain amount of ire from conservative Republicans, who were unlikely to support its domestic agenda anyway. But as Obama’s political advisers saw it, they could not afford to alienate any moderate or conservative Democrats. To White House chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, it looked like Holder’s comments were doing just that. Later that day, Sen. Max Baucus of Montana, a Democrat with an A plus rating from the NRA, went ballistic. “Senators to the Attorney General: Stay Away from Our Guns,” he said in a press release.

As the gun revolt was erupting in Congress, Emanuel’s then-deputy, Jim Messina, walked into the chief of staff’s office to tell him about Holder’s faux pas. As I recount in my recent book, Kill or Capture, Emanuel exploded. Slamming his desk, he cursed the attorney general for stepping off message. He sent word back to the Justice Department through aides that Holder needed to “shut the fuck up on guns.” The message was received, and neither Holder nor his bosses at the White House made gun control a priority in the following years.

Gun control is one of those issues.

Polls show that Latino support for gun control is greater than that of any other major ethnic or racial group, including African-Americans. A Pew Center study in April of this year found that when whites were asked which is more important, protecting the right of Americans to own guns or controlling gun ownership, 57 percent sided with the right to bear arms. Latinos, by contrast, were much more favorable to gun control. Only 29 percent of Latinos said protecting the right to bear arms was more important.

Other polls show that 69 percent of Latino voters believe the laws governing the sale of firearms should be stricter. Only 24 percent say they should remain the same. Unlike many gun-rights activists, only 5 percent of Latino voters say America’s gun laws should be less strict.

Latino support for the types of reform being talked about in the wake of the Newtown massacre is particularly strong. Take, for instance, mandating universal background checks for all gun purchasers. Under current law, only sales conducted by licensed dealers must involve a background check to see if the intended purchaser has a criminal record or a history of mental illness. Because you don’t need to have a license to sell a gun, it’s estimated that 40 percent of lawful gun sales are completed without a background check.

Several years later, some radical feminists tried—fortunately without much success—to boycott bookstores that sold Playboy magazine and other material deemed offensive by them.

Now the primary object of divestment and blacklisting around the world is the Middle East’s only democracy, Israel. Despite its imperfections, no country in history faced with comparable threats, both external and internal, has ever had a better record of human rights, or has ever fought its wars with more concern for avoiding civilian casualties. Yet Stevie Wonder and other benighted artists have now decided to boycott some pro-Israel events based on pressure from the United Nations.  Divestment against Israeli companies and academic boycotts of Israeli universities are also being advocated.

So there can be a real downside to the tactic of divesting and boycotting both products and nations based on controversial policies.

My ambivalence about these tactics stems from my very strong opposition to semi-automatic weapons and other gun-related items that make it easy for distraught people such as Adam Lanza to kill so many people in such a short period of time. I want to see semi-automatic weapons made illegal. I also want individuals to decide for themselves to stop buying such guns. Economic pressure such as that by Cerberus, and that being considered by the California teacher’s retirement system, may very well help to delegitimize the sale of guns and ammunition clips that serve no proper purpose outside of military or law enforcement, which on its face seems like a good thing.

She seems even to have imagined that firing guns was therapeutic for young Adam Lanza. She reportedly told a friend that it helped him become more focused and confident.

“How about bowling?” a detective said on hearing this after the massacre.

She is reported by CBS News to have bought the assault rifle first, in March 2010. She and Adam must have looked like two figures out of an NRA fantasy when they visited an outdoor range, mom and son sharing quality time and bonding by blasting away.

She may have delighted in finally finding something to get him outside his room, persuading him to do something physical and real rather than just withdrawing into the cyber-realm of his computer. She may have been too relieved to consider where it could lead and what might be the real appeal for him.

Since Dec. 14, a date that will live in infamy, they’ve been making their presence felt across the country, ranging from Pagliari, a New York–based corporate-event producer, to Sherri Masson, a 64-year-old Michigan grandmother and retired middle-school teacher, to Shannon Watts, a 41-year-old former corporate PR executive and mother of five in suburban Indianapolis.

“We need immediate action. We do not want this to fade,” says Watts, who was booked on Thomas Roberts’s 11 a.m. MSNBC program Wednesday to evangelize for the cause, which includes a federal ban on semiautomatic assault weapons and high-capacity magazines of the kind that were used in last week’s carnage, as well as closing the so-called gun-show loophole that eliminates the background check otherwise required at licensed gun stores to vet the purchaser of a lethal weapon. Watts calls her fledgling effort “One Million Moms for Gun Control.” She explains: “We’ve had enough dialogue about what’s wrong and what we need. We can spend days debating the culture of violence and the other factors—but we want to create action quickly.”

Jerry Pagliari’s Friday began normally enough. He was at home in the Hudson River village of Rhinebeck and getting ready to go Christmas shopping when his partner texted him that something alarming had just occurred in Connecticut.

“I didn’t know anything about this,” Pagliari recalls. “I got in the car and turned on the radio. By the time I got to the bottom of the driveway, I had to pull over. I was just overcome.” Hearing the news of the mass shootings of children and teachers at Sandy Hook Elementary School, Pagliari started to weep. “It was like a punch to the chest.”

Almost immediately, the answers came pouring in. As of Tuesday evening, more than a thousand people had submitted answers—nearly 600 who own guns, and the rest who don’t. The anonymity of the Internet and Twitter character counts do not always lend themselves to thoughtfulness and insight, but many readers seemed eager to put hyperbole and political expediency aside.

Some offerings were misguided attempts at humor—from both sides of the fence. Others were downright puerile. Many of the responses we received, however, were both civil and illuminating. The gun owners were not radical fantasists intent on the violent overthrow of the government. The non-gun owners did not wave the bloody shirt. Taken together, they represent the kind of conversation about gun ownership that responsible Americans should be having—both on the public airwaves and in their living rooms.

Among the gun owners, some common threads emerged. Readers from rural areas said that they own guns for practical concerns, like personal safety in homes located far from law enforcement, or as a necessary tool for their livelihoods.