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• Its Facebook page has disappeared. It has posted no tweets. It makes no mention of the shooting on its website. None of its leaders hit the media circuit Sunday to promote its support of the Second Amendment right to bear arms as the nation mourns the latest shooting victims and opens a new debate over gun restrictions. On Monday, the NRA offered no rebuttal as 300 anti-gun protesters marched to its Capitol Hill office.
• After previous mass shootings -- such as in Oregon and Wisconsin -- the group was quick to both send its condolences and defend gun owners' constitutional rights, popular among millions of Americans. There's no indication that the National Rifle Association's silence this time is a signal that a change in its ardent opposition to gun restrictions is imminent. Nor has there been any explanation for its absence from the debate thus far.
• The NRA, which claims 4.3 million members and is based in Northern Virginia, did not return telephone messages Monday seeking comment.
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• NEW YORK (AP) -- There's snow on the ground in Londonderry, N.H., nearly 200 miles to the north of the still-raw slaughter at a Connecticut elementary school, and dad Eric Heenan found himself in a routine fuss with his 9-year-old son over boots.
• "It's not cool to wear snow boots to school," he said Monday, "and then I was like, you know what, God forbid the last conversation we have is this. There but for the grace of God go we."
• Parents around the country are letting the small stuff slide, indulging their kids just a little bit, relieved as Heenan is to have them safe only a few days after a gunman claimed the lives 20 students and six adults in Newtown.
• In Safety Harbor, Fla., close to Tampa Bay, Christie O'Sullivan feels it with her two boys, 5 and 6, the latter the same age as many of the victims at Sandy Hook Elementary.
• She returned home Friday afternoon, several hours after Adam Lanza's rampage and suicide, to find a sink clogged by toilet paper and dirty tissues all over the floor of her guest bathroom as she madly tried to clean for a holiday party.
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