the problem is that it's a complex problem. therefore there are no simple solutions.

is easy access to highly lethal weaponry a factor?

of course it is. but it's not the whole problem. there are many laws one could imagine restricting guns, and to some extent that might reduce the problem, but certainly not eliminate it. someone hell-bent on going out in such a fashion would always be able to find a way.

is our american sense of entitlement and besiegement a factor?

of course it is. we've got more military than pretty much then entire rest of the world, yet we're always fighting a war or two against some tin-pot dictator who we're told would be taking over the world a la hitler if we didn't blow them to smithereens. so no matter how safe we might actually be, we're told to be fearful and to think that the right response is to kill others before we're killed ourselves. the whole media treatment of "terrorism" doesn't help. be afraid! there might be one under your bed! we're always under attack, and we always have a justification for violence.

is our entertainment industry's romance of violence a factor?

of course it is. it can't help to have movies and video games where the "hero" racks up a big body count, perhaps (in the case of movies) with some moral excuse, perhaps (in the case of video games) not really even bothering with that. who cares, you get to fantasize about shooting up tons of people! keeping in mind that video games are essentially military training simulations, this can't really be deemed irrelevant.


so what can be done?

i don't know, but if anything is to be truly effective, this is a problem on multiple fronts, and requires solutions on multiple fronts.

1) reasonable restrictions on guns and ammunition.
i don't know in detail. not bans, but not an empty gesture either.
at a minimum, gun owners need to be be held to a very high standard of responsibility.
perhaps that means more checks or restrictions upfront before getting a gun, perhaps more fines and/or prison time if any gun is involved in a crime.

2) the politicians and the media should back off from the "we're right, they're wrong, and we're right to kill them for it" approach to foreign policy. other countries have different perspectives and different cultures and different needs and different resources and we should try, TRY to have some respect, at least, for the people who live there, if not for the leaders themselves. it's way, WAY too simplistic to just think of some country as entirely full of terrorists, or entirely anti-american, or to think of their leader as the latest hitler.

3) hollywood needs to stop glorifying violence and righteous revenge, and the video game industry need to focus a bit more on the many, many games that aren't first-person shoot-em-ups.
i'm not suggesting that congress can impose the cure, i'm hoping that public pressure can make hollywood decide that yet another shoot-em-up might just be in poor taste.


bottom line, is that our culture is very, very dysfunctional with respect to violence.
these mass murders are just the most vivid demonstration of that dysfunction.
it's going to take a major shift in our entire culture to change this.

it's not going to be easy.

but we can start.