I can definitely see the point both sides are making here -- I agree that some mental conditions should definitely preclude firearm use (either through state or parental enforcement -- let's leave that argument aside for a minute), but I don't really think autism is one of them.
First, I'm not comfortable branding the shooter as autistic this early in the game; media reports are inconsistent and, at this stage in the game, I really don't trust them. Remember how they didn't even have the right guy to begin with? Remember after the Aurora shooting when CNN googled the guy's name and conflated him with somebody else who had the same name? It's these guys' job to (1) fill a news cycle and (2) fit something incomprehensible into an easily-digestible narrative.
Second, while I'm perfectly receptive to the notion that there may have been warning signs that should have made the mother think twice about guns as a hobby, I don't think that's anything to do with autism.
"Blame the parents" is an easy narrative, and to be honest it's often the correct one. And you pretty much have to at least CONSIDER it just on the grounds that it's the parent's guns that were used in the murders.
On the other hand, I think people see something unseemly about something that amounts to quite literally blaming the victim. The woman's body wasn't even cold when people started blaming her, and she's not around to defend herself. I can see how people are put off when somebody heaps scorn on someone who was just brutally murdered.
THAT said, I can't read a line like "She taught the boys how to use the guns responsibly" without snorting.
I don't like guns. I'm not interested in them as a hobby. And I think they should be restricted a lot further than they are (and the thing I hate most about Scalia is his smug hypocrisy -- "strict constructionist" whenever it suits him, but not when it comes to the Second Amendment).
But some people dig them, and most of those people don't end up killing anybody. We've got a thread right here with several people who have diagnosed mental conditions who still enjoy firing guns, and I'm not worried about any of them shooting anybody; we've got at least one guy saying he doesn't think he should have guns, and I respect his choice on the matter.
I'm definitely willing to consider that, in this specific instance, somebody fucked up somewhere and gave a gun to somebody who shouldn't have had one. But the reason he shouldn't have had one isn't that he was shy and socially awkward, or that he may or may not have had Asperger's. It was something else.
There's a danger to generalizing TOO much; as Constantine's been saying from the get-go, we don't want to stigmatize the majority of the mentally ill who are not dangerous. On the other hand, actually coming up with preventive measures against future shootings is going to REQUIRE some level of generalization; otherwise we'll be left with the kind of bullshit we've got at airports, a set of increasingly absurd half-measures designed to protect us from some very specific form of attack that somebody already tried but which is completely fucking useless in protecting us against whatever the NEXT attack may be.
It's late and I'm rambling. But hopefully there's something useful and coherent in all that?