That something was Cerberus's 95 percent ownership in the Freedom Group, a consistent money-maker for the teachers' pension fund. Though, unfortunately, Freedom Group happens to include domestic arms manufacturers Bushmaster and its subsidiary, Remington Arms.

As in Bushmaster, maker of a semiautomatic, civilian-issue version of the military M4 rifle, one of which was used in all of the Newtown school killings. Similar, entirely legal military style weapons also figured prominently in this summer's Aurora theater shootings and the shootings at a Portland, Ore. mall last week

I believe some calls were made.

The media also did their digging over the weekend and discovered that yes, indeed, the connection was absolutely true, but not necessarily isolated; pension plans in Texas and New York also have significant holdings in arms companies, though mostly in an indirect fashion, as well.

The real "aha" moment came Tuesday when Cerberus announced that it was going to sell off its Freedom Arms holdings, responding to both a very serious public optics issue and, one would suspect, some requests from folks at the pension board.

California's state treasurer, Bill Lockyer, told the Sacramento Bee that he'd made the recommendations to liquidate the holdings on Monday.

It's not the first time a public pension plan has been caught slightly unaware of the politically incorrect nature of its broad investments – and considering that plans as huge as California's have been making practically no money in recent years, those investments have become pretty broad. This one left a particularly bad taste in everyone's mouth.

Then there's the investment companies themselves, which are also working to reconcile their share – albeit profitable – in some suddenly very controversial holdings. According to the Huffington Post, Vanguard and BlackRock have significant holdings in Sturm Ruger and BlackRock itself also carries a sizeable portion of ownership in the Smith & Wesson Holding Corp.

It should be noted that the California teachers' fund also has holdings in both of those gunmakers – the pension plan announced Tuesday that it is now reconsidering many of those other holdings.

"These are tragic and devastating acts that took place at Sandy Hook and they have promoted many in this country to call for change and we're determining what we can do differently to help ensure that this unthinkable act never happens again," said Michael Sicilia, spokesman for the teachers' pension system.

So, after a year of intense media focus on some particularly heinous mass killings carried out by mentally unstable young men of a particular profile, this time the gun issue may not just slip away.

Though, when dollars are involved, that's always hard to say. Keep posted for the next development.