Roots of [gun] violence

Violence (gun or otherwise) has several roots:

• Selfishness
• Mental illness
• A mass "news" media that chooses to profit more from stirring up anger, divisiveness, and hatred than from simply reporting the news
• Broken and dysfunctional families -- especially families with no father
• Gangs
• Devaluing life to the point where the daily slaughter of 3,000 unborn children is normal (almost always for the mere convenience of one or both parents)
• Shameless, calculated destruction of entities that attempt to teach good values (eg churches, Boy Scouts, families)
• Harmful drugs and the "war on drugs"
• Diagnosing children with ADHD, then drugging them into factory-like uniformity with drugs known to have violent behavior as a side effect
• Government schools that are better at indoctrination than education
• Politicians who prohibit/mandate things/activities they know nothing about
• Dependence on a welfare/police state combined with ironic disrespect for authority
• Rejection of God in individual lives, families, communities, schools, and the nation as a whole
• Etc.

All of those problems are tough to fix. Blaming an inanimate object and responsible persons who own such objects is easier -- the lazy coward's way out.

"While the desire to prevent atrocities like the one committed in Las Vegas is both understandable and good, it is impossible to have a reasoned discussion on the best ways to prevent mass attacks when emotions, rather than facts, are the foundation for debate." —Sean Davis

Emotion is a terrible to make law or policy.