Parents and adults who knowingly allow children access to guns face prison sentences and heavy fines under proposals announced by President Clinton a week after the Colorado school shooting.
The President unveiled a gun-control package in the hope that the shock of the Littleton high school shooting would help to win over opponents of such measures in Congress. But doubts have already been expressed on Capitol Hill that this is the right approach.
Under the proposed legislation, adults or parents who "knowingly or recklessly" allowed children access to guns which were then used in a crime would face prison sentences of three to 10 years and $10,000 fines. There would also be a lifetime ban on gun ownership for people who committed violent crimes as juveniles.
The President also wants background checks on anyone buying guns at a gun show. It is believed that some of the guns used in the Littleton shooting - in which 14 students and a teacher died - were purchased at a gun show.
Background checks are also sought for those buying explosives. Home-made pipe bombs were used during the killing rampage at Littleton.
Meanwhile, a nation-wide poll of high school students shows that a third have heard a student threaten to kill someone and few of them reported the threats to a teacher. Four out of 10 said they knew students who might be troubled enough to do something like what happened at Littleton.
The Washington Post/ABC News poll shows that about half of teenagers are growing up in homes with guns and more than half say it would be easy for them to lay their hands on one.
The Democratic Senate majority leader, Senator Tom Daschle, has expressed scepticism about strengthening gun laws. "I'm not sure that gun legislation is what we need," he told reporters.
He suggested that school shootings were a social problem involving parental and teacher neglect, and violence in the media and on the Internet.
Mr Andrew Molchan, director of the National Association of Federally Licensed Gun Dealers, said his members support a lifetime ban on gun ownership for anyone who commits a violent crime. But the rest of the Clinton proposals were "an unfortunate diversion", he said.