After Littleton, Guns Under Fire

LITTLETON: The breakdown of families, alienation at school, Goth culture, violent TV, film and video games, and rock music -- they've all been named as accomplices in the Littleton massacre. Some guilty verdicts have been passed out: An upcoming Marilyn Manson concert has been canceled, and MGM has pulled the film "Basketball Diaries" off of video store shelves because one fantasy scene has a trench-coated Leo DiCaprio spraying his school with bullets. But at week's end, there was a clear leader in the scapegoat derby: Guns.

"If there was a winner in this week's mayhem, it's gun control advocates," says TIME Denver bureau chief Richard Woodbury. From Colorado to Washington, long-dead legislation is back on the table, single-issue pol Rep. Carolyn McCarthy is back on TV again, and no less a public pulse-taker than Rosie O'Donnell is calling for a near-total ban on guns, England-style. Will Littleton be our Dunblane? The logic is clear enough: Guns may not kill people, but neither do disaffected teens -- until they get a hold of some guns. Keep guns away from those teens, and they can't shoot anyone. But they can still blow plenty of people up with homemade pipe bombs.