How will gun owners respond?

Groups that want more gun control think this is the moment – that the Newtown massacre finally is the kind of outrage that will not so easily fade from peoples’ minds.

And we’re seeing indications of that – even to the point that CERBERUS, the Wall Street investment firm, announced it is selling its stake in the company that makes the Bushmaster rifle Adam Lanza used.

That comes a day after we heard about how bullets fired in the classrooms ended up penetrating cars in the parking lot. That’s how powerful these military weapons are. Police also found hundreds of unfired rounds, enough so that Lanza could have killed everyone in that building.

Any non-felonious, non-mentally ill adult in America can legally own that kind of firepower, and can pretty much store it in a closet if they want to. Some states hold gun owners criminally liable if their guns aren’t stored properly and fall into the wrong hands – but of course that kicks in after the damage has been done.

No one knows whether this will tip the balance on gun control. But you know what might make a difference? If this incident motivates gun owners to get serious about how they store their guns.

Maybe more people now will re-think the chances of getting killed with their own weapons, or imagine what it would be like to wake up one Friday morning to a terrifying news bulletin and then get a knock on the door a few hours later from a couple of cops asking if you’d heard what just happened, and did you know your weapons were missing?