The disciples were "startled and terrified" when the risen Lord stood in their midst, we read in the gospel this Sunday. Ten years after students at Colorado's Columbine High School were terrified by two heavily armed students who killed 12 fellow students, a teacher, and themselves, a survey suggests that support for stricter gun laws has diminished rather than grown in recent years, despite a steady stream of other gun massacres.

For a time, the carnage at Columbine--and the ease with which the teenagers acquired high-powered weapons--seemed to usher in a new era of support for greater regulation of firearms. But in recent years support has waned. A poll released last week by CNN showed that support for stricter gun laws was at an all-time low, with only 39 percent of respondents in favor. Eight years ago that number was 54 percent.

Texas lawmakers are mulling a new law that would allow college students to carry firearms on campus. Utah already makes this practice legal. Another law up for debate in Texas would prohibit most companies from barring employees from keeping guns in their cars in company parking lots. In Montana, only last-minute compromise stripped a new law of language that would have given residents the right to carry concealed weapons with or without a permit.

Since 2003 at least eight states have either passed new laws giving most residents the right to carry concealed handguns or changed existing laws to make it harder for state officials to deny those permits, according to a 2008 study in the Yale Law & Policy Review.

In the past couple of years another trend has taken root, too: the expansion of the so-called Castle Doctrine, a legal theory enshrined in common law. It is used to justify deadly force in the defense of one's home, although it's usually interpreted to include a duty to try to avoid confrontation if one can.

Last year the Supreme Court struck down what had been the strictest gun-control ordinance in the country, the ban on handguns in murder-plagued Washington, D.C.

Source: Articles by Michael A. Lindenberger for TIME and Catherine Tsai for Associated Press