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CBS host Bob Schieffer on Sunday reflected on the recent massacre of 20 elementary school children in Connecticut and wondered "to what depths of horror must we sink" before lawmakers and politicians begin to take the issue of gun violence seriously.

"By now, the pros and cons of the gun issue are well known," Schieffer said in his Face the Nation commentary. "But here is the question that must be asked: Is what happened Friday the new normal? Of course, there are legitimate reasons for both pleasure and protection to own guns, but if the slaughter of innocent children is not bad enough to make us re-think what we can do to keep guns out of the hands of the mentally ill, what is bad enough?"

"To what depths of horror must we sink before we say this cannot be tolerated? Are we willing to settle for a culture in which kindergarten children are no longer safe in the classroom and a visit to the mall or a movie is a life-threatening experience?"

"In recent years there has been no effort to address this problem, no piece of gun legislation was seriously considered during this session of Congress," he continued. "It is a subject no one wants to talk about for fear of offending the powerful gun lobby. It is time to remember what Ed Murrow told us, that we are not descended from fearful people. Our forefathers had the courage to tell the most powerful country of their day, 'You have gone too far, we can tolerate this no more.' And upon their courage, America was built. Have we, their descendants, become so afraid of the possible political consequences that we are unwilling to explore ways to make safer world for our children? I cannot believe we have. I think we are better than that."

During a panel segment later in the show, Schieffer asked Lehigh University professor Dr. James Peterson if the country had reached a "tipping point" to reverse the trend of gun laws becoming more lax in recent years.

"There's a way in which we're moving in two different directions at the same time," Peterson explained. "Proliferation of guns and the frequency of these kinds of mass shooting incidences, and then the other direction, our policy seems to be one that wants to be more freedom and more for a free-market system in terms of guns and gun ownership."

"You think about the whole terroristic element of this," he added. "This should be a new front on the war on terror. And it needs to be domestic, and it needs to be directed around some of these issues of the proliferation of guns."

Schieffer agreed: "That's the part that I find kind of interesting about this. After 9/11, we turned this culture upside down, we doubled defense budget. If this person had had -- I'm sorry to say this -- but if he had had an Arab name, people would be going nuts about what we ought to do right now. And yet, we can't seem to decide, is this a problem we can solve?"

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Ed Schultz expressed some of the same frustration I have right now with President Obama continuing to put out the olive branches to Republicans and as he said, “have an amiable tone about it” and asked economist David Cay Johnston about the upcoming meetings between Republicans and the White House which is about to take place, and if anything positive for average Americans might come out of it.

Johnston wasn't optimistic and he's not the first person I've seen ask if the GOP is actually crass enough that they might be willing to actually tank our economy because of their rigid political ideology and their absolute unwillingness to raise taxes or do anything else that would get Americans back to work if heaven forbid it might make President Obama look good.

I hope to hell he's wrong and I don't know if it will do an ounce of good or not, but I would hope these members of Congress start having their phones ring and their inboxes filling up from any of their constituents who are following what's going on with this hostage taking telling them they've had enough of it.

JOHNSTON: I don't think so Ed and I think it's getting to be very, very troubling. You know there's an assumption out there that eventually the Republicans will come around and they'll have to settle so we don't default. I think we have to consider the very real possibility that they're willing to submarine the entire history of American economic dominance in the last seventy years or so, in order to achieve a point.

And there's nowhere if you think about it for the Republicans to go. They have made cutting taxes their sole issue. There's no...

SCHULTZ: That's right.

JOHNSTON: ...there's no idea of any other kind, of building the country. I was in China last week and you marvel at the roads they build, at the way that government has seized the future. What the Republicans have done is painted themselves into a corner. And they have nowhere to go but to say more and more tax cuts and even if it means that the country goes into much deeper trouble than it's in now. And that will happen if we don't pay our debts.

Dr. James Peterson followed with one of the better points I've heard made in a while about just what the demands of the Republicans are after Schultz pointed out that they don't seem to listen to anyone that doesn't have money.

PETERSON: That's pretty much the long and the short of it. They want everyone else to tighten their belts. They want school teachers and educators – tighten your belts, poor folk – tighten your belts, immigrants – tighten your belts, every social service to tighten its belt, Medicare – tighten your belts. But they want to insulate the people you're calling job creators, that's very generous Ed.

SCHULTZ: Yeah.

PETERSON: They're not job creators. They're debt shufflers and CEO's of multinational corporations that outsource our labor force. So in the end I have no idea how the Republicans can see how we're going to move forward and progress in this country playing this chicken game with the debt ceiling.

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