Guests: Alan Gottlieb

"Having done extensive research on Lee Harvey Oswald for my book 'Killing Kennedy,' I know something about violent evil. I also saw it first hand in El Salvador and the Middle East. So when I first heard that Adam Lanza had murdered 27 people, including 20 little children, I pretty much knew a few things about him. Number one, he was deeply angry; number two, he was alienated from most other human beings; number three, he was most likely deeply involved with the Internet. There has been speculation that he had Asperger's syndrome, but it is deeply unfair to Americans who do have that personality disorder to diagnose Lanza without conclusive proof. What can be done about people like him? Very little. Our freedoms dictate that we cannot warehouse people who are 'strange' - they must commit a crime or do something very destructive to themselves before they can be taken into custody. Apparently Adam Lanza did not do those things until the day he committed mass murder, and so the attention turns to the guns he took from his mother. There is no question that America does have a gun culture, and children ages 5 to 14 are thirteen times as likely to be murdered with guns here as children in other industrialized nations. But before Congress takes any action, it should study the situations in Eastern Europe and Russia, where most guns are banned. Those countries have a higher murder rate than the USA. Talking Points wants a sane country with smart public safety measures. Do we need semi-automatic rifles to be easily available? That's a worthy debate and there are strong points on both sides. But clearly, we the people have to take a tough look at our violent society and find some effective solutions without violating constitutional rights."

The Factor welcomed Alan Gottlieb, founder of an organization opposed to most gun control measures. "If you look at the data," Gottlieb began, "we banned 'assault weapons' in 1994, but it had no impact at all on homicide rates or mass murders. So we already know it doesn't work. And if everybody calls for banning these guns, we're going to see record sales of these firearms, which is not what the anti-gun people want." Gottlieb insisted that high-powered rifles can serve a useful purpose. "We saw Korean merchants using these types of weapons during the Los Angeles riots so that their places of businesses weren't looted and burned down, and we saw people using these firearms during Hurricane Andrew to stop looting." The Factor offered a rejoinder, asking, "In Australia they banned semi-automatic weapons and the crime rate plummeted there, so wouldn't it make sense just to tighten things up a little bit?"

Guests: Juan Williams and Mary Katharine Ham

Mary Katharine Ham and Juan Williams continued the discussion about guns and violence in America. "I would do some things right away," Williams declared. "I think the states should be free to share information about background checks and background checks should include a full family check. And we as a country have to have an assault weapon ban and we have to stop selling large magazines." Ham theorized that legislation is likely to be ineffective. "Nobody has pointed out the law that would have prevented this incident. Connecticut has some of the stricter gun laws and there is an 'assault weapons' ban in Connecticut. We're a reactive society not because we aren't caring, it's because we have these freedoms that we prize very highly. But I think some discussion about the intersection of mental health and owning guns could be helpful."

Guests: Bill Hemmer

The Factor asked FNC anchor Bill Hemmer, who has been stationed in Newtown, about the town and the young man who went on a killing spree. "What I am told," Hemmer reported, "is that Adam Lanza was well known here. He was the kind of person who did not fit in. People told me he would stop on the sidewalk and stare at you and stare at you more until you passed by, and in social settings he barely talked. But he had no criminal record, none." Hemmer added that he has spoken with many Newtown residents who are overwhelmed by grief. "This is a town in absolute mourning, a town in tears, and there will be two more funerals tomorrow."

Guests: Jeremy Khinoo

As The Factor reported last week, 27-year-old former Marine Jon Hammar has languished in a Mexican prison since being arrested on a flimsy gun possession charge four months ago. Jeremy Khinoo, who spent three years in a Mexican jail after being caught with steroids, described what Hammar is likely facing. "It was hell and it was barely livable," he recalled. "The prison was built for 400 people but there were 1,200 people there. They don't give you a blanket, clothes, toothbrush, nothing. You're just in there like an animal and there were fights on a daily basis. I saw a couple of murders and I was stabbed two times."

Guests: Bernie Goldberg

Even as reports of the massacre in Newtown were first emerging, some pundits used the shooting as an excuse to call for more gun control. FNC's Bernie Goldberg evaluated the coverage. "There should be a reasonable period of time when we simply mourn," he said, "and there should be no politics. But it took minutes for some on the left to start in with their gun agenda, and conservative media also used the tragedy to further their agenda. There was immediately talk about how we took God out of the classroom, so we shouldn't be surprised when there's carnage in the schools, and there was talk about how we have a million abortions a year, which cheapens life. As if an insane gunman cares about God in the classroom or abortion!" The Factor urged both sides to be more circumspect: "We didn't do any political stuff Friday because it just wasn't appropriate. The folks wanted to know what happened, they didn't want the politics."

Guests: Lt. Col. Dave Grossman and Mary Ellen O'Toole

As mentioned in the Talking Points, America suffers from far more gun violence that other advanced nations. The Factor welcomed Lt. Col. Dave Grossman, a former West Point psychologist, who placed part of the blame on ultra-violent video games. "These video games," Grossman lamented, "provide the same conditioning to children that we provide to military and law enforcement adults. These are 'murder simulators! There had never been a juvenile mass murder in a school in human history until the late 1970's and today juvenile mass murders are everywhere. We need to understand that the sickest games and the sickest movies are very sick indeed!" Mary Ellen O'Toole, a former FBI profiler, affirmed that Americans are indeed more violent than citizens of other countries. "There are people in the United States who have a propensity for violence and the quality of our violence is different, especially when it comes to mass homicide by adolescents and young adults. For a small group of people, that propensity for violence can be exacerbated by how you're raised and what you view on TV and video games."

Be very skeptical when listening to the mainstream media these days, many of them are simply not in business to tell the truth.

Alice Hickethier, Belfair, WA: "I don't like using the word 'evil.' It trivializes something we should seek to understand."

Paul Taylor, New Glasgow, Canada: "I don't believe modern culture is to blame. The most horrific school killings happened in 1927 in Bath, Michigan when a man used dynamite to kill 45."

Teresa DePalolo, Quebec, Canada: "How many more children have to die before America amends the gun laws? I am thankful for the strict gun laws up here."