There is no shortage of critiques of the suburbs. The most popular suburban critiques typically are cultural and revolve around disgust with Eisenhower era superficiality and antipathy towards white flight. There have even been some recent environmental additions to criticizing the suburban lifestyle with its long daily work commutes burning massive amounts of fossil fuel making the suburbs themselves unsustainable and wasteful.

But now there is a new critique of suburban living, health. Mental and physical.

Given the landscape of the Sunday morning talk shows and the obvious awkwardness of the moment, it is a bit chuckle-inducing that the NRA’s Wayne LaPierre chose, of all people, that journalistic pit bull David Gregory from the liberal NBC for his “exclusive interview,” rather than, say, Chris Wallace on Fox. Gregory, naturally, isn’t the least bit embarrassed, but instead has taken to twitter like a schoolgirl, asking hither and yon, “What should I ask him?” Too bad he doesn’t try this novel approach each week; the results could hardly be worse.

But you really have to set your drink down when LaPierre says, in advance, that he wants to focus on “mental health,” which is kind of like Saddam Hussein saying he wants to share decorating tips. No sentient being on earth would give a rat’s ass what either of these two have to say on their chosen topics except, well, David Gregory.

The President will support a reinstatement of the assault weapons ban in the wake of the mass shooting at an elementary school in Newtown, Connecticut. He will also “consider” legislation limiting extended magazines that carry a high capacity of bullets, as well as legislation closing the “gun show loophole,” which enables gun purchasers to avoid background checks by buying them at gun shows.

Before this fight gets waged there has to be some understanding of what problem needs to be solved. I completely agree with Mark Kleiman that asking “how do we stop the type of shootings we saw in Newtown” risks solving the wrong problem. The gun safety debate should not just focus on protecting children, and it may not be accurate to tailor policies toward preventing mass shootings. There are certainly things we can do to curtail the 9,000-odd homicides with guns used each year, but they may not be applicable to the case of the young, mostly white, often mentally disturbed individuals who commit mass murder, often out of a need for attention, which is then lavished upon them by the news media.

Dianne Feinstein, author of the 1994 assault weapons ban that expired under President George W. Bush in 2004, told Meet the Press that she plans to reintroduce the law on the first day of the new Congress in 2013. The bill seeks to respond to the mass shooting at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Connecticut, one of several this year.

Staying with my Texas theme this morning, the state is about to execute a mentally retarded man today, despite a Supreme Court prohibition on the practice which they managed to get around, by finding a man with the intellect of a six year old was eligible for the death penalty.

When considering the effects of unemployment, and the desultory, really uncaring response of the current Democratic administration, as well as Republicans in Congress, to the human devastation of joblessness, it is important to consider the terrible emotional and psychological effects of such unemployment. Such effects are well-documented, but rarely mentioned in articles or blog postings.

Jared Loughner, accused of shooting Gabrielle Giffords and killing 6 people in a rampage in Tuscon this January, has been ruled mentally incompetent to stand trial by a federal judge today.

Obama avoids the discussion of high-capacity magazine clips like the one Jared Loughner used, or the broken American mental health system that never gave Loughner care he clearly needed. Once again we have a cautious middle course. But even on those terms, I’m not sure what he’s endorsing here. Does he want to close the gun show loophole? Does he need legislation to carry out his vision of responsible and consistent background checks? Is it all just a matter of enforcement?

E.J. Dionne had an op-ed this week about how “responsibility equals invisibility.” He contrasted the divisiveness of Scott Walker in Wisconsin or John Kasich in Ohio with the more measured approaches of Democratic governors dealing with their budget crises.