Gentlemen, back when I was growing up, we had one thing like this that happened in 1984 when a guy shot up a McDonald's in California. People were rightfully appalled. That kind of thing just did not happen. Since the 1990s, it has happened with increasing frequency. The question is why has this happened? This country has been gun happy since its founding. We have always had guns but people did not massacre each other, or at least not with the frequency we see it happening at now. What are the reasons for the change? It isn't guns or lack of gun control because guns have been the one constant.
In my opinion, it is the pervasiveness of violence on TV and elsewhere. I don't think there is any question about it. When I was growing up, we had 3 main TV channels, PBS, and some local stations that would later become FOX and WB affiliates. Then we got cable TV and the additional options there for a grand total of about 30 channels. Now you get TV packages where you have 800 channels and tons of options. We have videogames where we celebrate headshots. Now you or I can be subjected to this and not feel the urge to go kill a bunch of people, but some people cannot. What is worse is that when these people commit the kind of shit they do, they are glorified on TV for a couple weeks until the next big story comes along.
I would never propose scaling back or censoring in any way the violent content that we are subjected to, nor would I advocated restrictions on press coverage for these lunatics. Besides the obvious constitutional challenges of such things, I think it is a battle that can't be won. Yet people seem to think that some kind of gun control is going to stop this shit. Short of gun confiscation, nothing is going to stop this kind of shit other than throwing lunatics back in the loony bin like they used to, and we all know that isn't going to happen. We don't ostracize people with mental illness anymore.