Newtown's legislative council had heard enough: residents complaining about loud gunfire, the Connecticut town's small police station inundated with phone calls from frightened residents.

So, a few months ago, they tried to restrict when and where residents could shoot their guns in an effort to quiet the complaints.

Instead, they got an earful from gun-control opponents.

Today, there's a much deeper debate over gun rights in Newtown and around the country in the wake of Friday's massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary school.

And the battle line in that debate runs straight through towns such as the once-sleepy Connecticut community.

"It's a town with a longstanding history and cultural tradition of guns," explained council member Paul Lundquist.

Newtown's longstanding gun culture manifested itself as a family outing for Adam Lanza, 20, who authorities say shot and killed his mother -- who introduced him to target shooting -- before killing 20 children and six adults at the elementary school and then taking his own life.

For several years, Lanza and his mother frequented several gun ranges in the area, according to federal authorities. That's nothing out of the ordinary in this Connecticut town, where shooting sports are a popular pastime.

"In Newtown right now, you can shoot any gun at anytime on your property," said town police commission member Joel Faxon.

The commission's attempt earlier this year to curb the city's lax attitude toward gun use was stonewalled by gun-control opponents in August, which Faxon said he couldn't understand.

"All we wanted to do was make sure that all the guns that are fired in Newtown are fired in a safe fashion and aren't going to injure anybody and aren't going to infringe on anybody else's property and create a danger," Faxson explained. "Even that safety-based solution was staunchly and vigorously opposed by gun rights individuals."

It shows just how sensitive the debate over gun control can be in Newtown -- and the nation. But what about now? Has the climate for gun control changed in the wake of Friday's horrible attack? Might Newton's gun culture change as a result of what happened at Sandy Hook Elementary?

"I would hope so," Faxon says. "The time has come now for people to be reasonable. It's unreasonable not to have a safety ordinance about where you're going to have a shooting range. If that can't pass, I mean, what CAN pass?"

Gun-control opponents say even small restrictions represent a slippery slope that threatens Second Amendment constitutional rights.

"You can make as many laws as you want it will NOT change people who want to hurt others," said CNN commenter Steve Lahey. "We all need to arm ourselves now. That is the only way."

Another CNN commenter, Hector Rodriguez, disagrees. He suggests the nation should "start by banning all assault weapons. You don't need them unless you want to be the next mass shooter!"

These comments and other similarly entrenched positions on both sides of the debate show that gun rights are connected with deep-seated moral issues for many Americans, explained constitutional expert David Kopel.

"Just as some people believe there can be absolutely no restrictions on the First Amendment right of freedom of speech and of the press, some other people take a similar view to the Second Amendment about the right to bear arms," said Kopel of the Denver-based think tank Independence Institute. "At the other end of the spectrum, some advocates of gun prohibition view the idea of owning guns to defend yourself as intrinsically immoral."

In Washington, the gun-control issue has lain virtually dormant for years since a 1994 federal ban on semi-automatic assault rifles elapsed in 2004.

But that was before Friday.