The highway from the centre of Denver to the scene of the suburban school massacre has billboards with pictures of Charlton Heston, the head of the powerful National Rifle Association. This is to publicise the NRA's annual convention in the city this month, when it will continue its campaign against gun controls.

Even before this terrible tragedy at Columbine High School, Denver was already the site of a battle between the advocates of gun control and those who see such controls as a violation of their constitutional right to bear arms. The Colorado legislature has three separate Bills aimed at making Denver and the rest of the state an easier place to buy and carry guns. What timing!

The Columbine slayings of 14 students and a teacher have given new intensity to the battle over access to firearms which has intensified in recent years as school shootings become almost routine. In the past 18 months, at least 14 people have died and another 46 have been wounded in six schools.

Each time the argument breaks out afresh between those calling for much tougher controls on the sale and carrying of guns and the NRA, representing 2.7 million gun owners, which repeats its mantra that it is not the guns that kill people but those that use them.

And of course, the constitution says, "The right of the people to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed."

The policy should be to crack down more on criminals and not on guns, the NRA argument goes.

By an eerie coincidence, Denver in recent months has been the focus of some of the NRA's heaviest lobbying, to try to undo the tougher anti-gun laws the city passed five years ago.

At its convention last year the NRA, sensing that it was losing the national debate, elected Charlton Heston as its leader - or its "Moses to lead it out of the wilderness," as former Marine Colonel Oliver North, a board member, quipped.

As a former film star, Mr Heston has the skills to present the NRA case forcefully. President Clinton, a fervent advocate of gun control, has been one of his targets.

A sample: "Mr Clinton, America didn't trust you with our health care system . . . America doesn't trust you with our 21-year-old daughters, and we sure don't trust you with our guns."

But in spite of such rhetoric, the NRA is feeling the anti-gun pressure as parents become fearful for their children following the series of school shootings, and as cities around the US, using the anti-tobacco model, have begun suing gun manufacturers to recoup costs stemming from gun violence.

Half a dozen cities have filed suits against gun manufacturers. They are New Orleans, Chicago, Miami, Bridgeport, Atlanta and Cleveland. Boston, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Philadelphia and New York are considering such suits.

Republican-controlled state legislatures such as Colorado are trying to head off this trend by passing laws to outlaw such litigation.

The NRA is still smarting over a reverse in Missouri, which is regarded as one of its strongholds. Earlier this month the voters there rejected an attempt to lift a ban on concealed weapons, although the gun lobby spent an estimated $3.7 million on the campaign.

However, even the anti-gun lobby admits that there is more to ending the school shootings phenomenon than more restricted access to guns. For President Clinton and his Education Secretary, Mr Richard Riley, both strong advocates of gun control, it is important to pay more attention to the nation's children than to the guns.

Within hours of the Denver tragedy, the President told America that it may never be fully understood but, "we do know that we must do more to reach out to our children and teach them to express their anger and to resolve their conflicts with words, not weapons."

Just six months ago, President Clinton held a White House conference on school violence attended by about 800 educators and law-enforcement officials.

Many schools are reluctant, however, to introduce strict security measures such as metal detectors, as they would create the wrong atmosphere for a place of learning.

The country's first law officer, the Attorney General, Ms Janet Reno, said after the Denver killings that stricter gun control laws were only part of the solution. She said that schools, churches, parents and community groups must work together to respond sooner to signs of troubled teenagers and help them resolve their anger before they resort to deadly force.

"There is no one answer" that will end the shootings at schools, Ms Reno said yesterday. "We've got to get guns out of the hands of young people. We've got to make sure they have the counselling, the support to help them come to grips with the anger of their life when it occurs."

Schools are still a safer place for American children than their own homes and the streets, but a school shooting is always shocking. Statistics show that fewer than 1 per cent of all homicides among school-aged children (five to 19 years) occur in or around school grounds or on the way to and from school.

Studies indicate that guns in schools kill 20 to 30 students a year, whereas up to 3,000 children and teenagers are murdered each year, often by parents and those looking after them.

In Denver, the pro-and anti-gun control lobbies will now fight out their battle in the shadow of the mourning at the suburban Columbine High School. The mayor, Mr Wellington Webb, is angry at the attempts of the state legislature to ease the gun controls, which he says have contributed, over five years, to a 35 per cent drop in overall crime and a 42 per cent drop in homicides.

Representative Doug Dean, who is a sponsor of the Bill which would make it easier for gun owners to obtain concealed weapon permits, argues that this school tragedy might have been averted if a staff member had been armed.

Another supporter, state Senator Ken Chlouber, has complained that the Denver authorities have "made virtually every gun imaginable an assault weapon and banned it. They've pulled people driving through with guns in their car off the streets, seized their weapons, impounded their vehicles, thrown them in jail. It's outrageous."

Tell that to the parents of the victims of Columbine High and the wounded, and see if they think it is "outrageous."