Actually quite a lot of people claim otherwise. If you watch mainstream news after a massacre, you frequently see everything from video games, to the state flag, to national attitudes regarding mental illness, to bad parenting, to bullying, to nearly any other non-gun topic blamed for the tragedy.

As long as mass shootings are discussed as a uniquely "US-issue" and not simply as a uniquely "Gun-ownership issue" these red herring discussions will continue. Especially as the narrative that the US is different from the rest of the world is one we love to tell (even when negative). There is a difference, but that difference is only the # of guns. All other sociological differences don't seem significant.

Now as I've said elsewhere in this thread, the issue of gun ownership has a heck of a lot more nuance than the two sides seem to recognize, and personally I find that I don't have enough solid data to be pro-gun or anti-gun, and mostly just want for the country to finally agree this is an issue worth spending national dollars on studying.

But I think so far we're much more likely to end up with studies on video game violence, mental health treatment models, etc, as NO ONE on TV utters anything but rhetoric after these events, and ironically these extremely rare and statistically insignificant (but anecdotally significant) events are the only time it comes up at all.

In fact, the leading cause of gun deaths in the US is suicide. And there's actually some REALLY interesting data and discussion to be had there (such as extrapolating bridge suicide nets with successful suicides before and after), and with around 20,000 annually this is a much bigger public safety issue than a few hundred spree shooting deaths, but it's also a discussion we'll simply never have at a national level.

I'm surprised I read down so far before somebody brought up that about sqaurely 2/3 of the 30kish gun deaths stat that always gets banded about is from suicides.. Not surprised you brought it up.

Probably not the best post to throw my 2c in to but... I don't see how the right to own guns could ever be anything more than opinionated. For me personally the numbers are just too low (especially after accounting for gangs deaths) to get behind anything other than increased purchasing checks.. Even then not sure how much actually good that would do.