re: #5 gwangung

Um, doesn’t this miss the point?

Yes, there were many factors, but lethality is heightened by guns.

I don’t think it misses the point at all. If you could wave a magic wand and change nothing else, taking away all the guns and leaving all the dangerous mentally unhealthy people untouched might reduce the body count in the near term, but it wouldn’t really solve the underlying problem. The only thing that kept this guy from building bombs instead of using his mother’s guns is the fact that he didn’t see himself as the kind of person who builds bombs. Find out why he did see himself as the kind of person who goes on a shooting rampage. Assume he was definitely going to kill someone regardless. Why did he choose one method over another? The answer is not a trivial detail. I think it’s key to understanding why these things happen.