Debate on gun control heightens

Associated Press

HARTFORD -- The family of two young boys killed in an apparent murder-suicide, and state police, said Thursday they want to know why the boys' grandmother, with an apparent history of mental health problems, had access to the revolver used in the shooting.

The shooting has added urgency to a legislative review of access to guns that is already under way in Connecticut, where a troubled 20-year-old man gunned down 26 people, including 20 first-graders, on the opposite side of the state at a Newtown school on Dec. 14.

The two boys' grandmother, 47-year-old Debra Denison, was supposed to take them from a day care to a birthday party Tuesday but instead drove to a nearby lake where she and the children were found shot to death after a frantic search. Police said the gun had been taken from her home, and one relative said it apparently belonged to Denison's husband.

"It was in the house, which is hard to believe," said Marcia White, a paternal great-grandmother of the boys, who said Denison's struggles with mental health were well known to the family.