Driving around Wyoming, I felt a bit out of place without a pickup truck with a gun rack in the back window. Not that the folks were armed in fear and anger. Quite the opposite. Smiles were everywhere, with guns insuring peace on earth and goodwill towards men.

The good folks of Sandy Hook would disagree, and so Americans divide on yet another fault line, hurling insults across the trenches. Curiously, I've traveled a country taking pride in the diversity of its people, but not the diversity of the opinions of its people. Elections are about which ideas will dominate and what laws will bring the miscreants in line.

Thousands of miles ago, in a sleepy farm house called Monticello, I heard of a remedy from hundreds of years ago. Thomas Jefferson asked us not to look to the federal government as the solution to our problems. He envisioned the feds inspiring, organizing, and empowering us to solve our own problems.

Brought back today, he might have approvingly noticed that states decide how we drive cars and towns decide how we park them. He would've encouraged us to trust each other to do the same with guns, and to accept the result to be a patchwork of laws that reflects our diversity.

The feds need not walk away from the problem. They could do the analysis to compare the results, to release reports of successes and failures, to weigh in with expert opinions, and even use their pulpits to preach their opinions. But we the people would stop waiting and hoping that someone far away would send the cavalry to sort out our problems. We would view the feds as a clearinghouse of ideas and results, but turn to our Congressmen and Councilmen to use from all that what will work for us.

That would put us closer to the action, closer to where we as individuals could make a difference, close enough to our neighbors to listen and tolerate.

Of course we have plenty of national issues the feds have to decide, but what if abortion, gay marriage, welfare, and so many other divisive issues were referred back to town meetings to decide? Could we trust our fellow Americans?