[quote=no_such_reality][quote=spdrun]Exactly. Unless they were walking around the house armed with a gun, it’s unlikely a gun would have helped them.[/quote]

The gun debate is a useless gross simplification applied to an unrelated scenario

This is a mental health issue.

Guns, knives, bombs, powder in envelopes, even poison or cars the tool isn’t the problem[/quote]

No, that is not correct. They are very much part of the problem, for without them the problem would not exist. You cannot detach the tool from the worker, from the deed, just as you can’t detach effect from cause. If BMWs were banned, there would be no deaths caused by BMWs. If you banned shovels, no ditches would be dug.

You are right in that this is a mental health issue. But is also a media issue, social issue, gun control issue, and last but not least, a mindset issue. While the focus is on the underlying causes, such as why someone would commit such an act of violence, the acts of violence continue.

This disconnect is as big a psychological barrier to remedying the immediate problem as the sociopathy, and psychopathy that manifests themselves in these abhorrent events. In other words, the mindset is one of the causes. Change the mindset and you can begin to dismantle the tools. When the tools no longer pose such a big threat the real work can begin on the underlying causes. Priorities are absent from this debate.