Access to guns, the glorification of shooting and killing, the general culture of violence, the celebrity status given to mass shooters enabled and incentivized Elliot Rodgers.[/quote]
All very true. How do you deal with it?
Democracy died the day gun control legislation failed. You can turn the other way, and accept that we live in democracy in ‘name only’, and tolerate the pervasive influence special interest groups enjoys over the democratic process. But that seems so counter to the spirit of the 2nd Amendment, the interpretation of which is contentious, and which creates this contradictory conundrum. Armed uprising against dysfunctional government, which endorses its own overthrow by allowing itself to be dysfunctional. :/ Something like that???
Going after Hollywood and censoring violence would probably be a bigger waste of time than going after the NRA. Trying to understand the psychological causes of these mass killings in order to create early warning detections is going to be complicated, because not enough is understood about the problem. It’s also probably going to infringe upon civil liberties, and be very prone to error. There needs to be a more immediate and practical solution, that is free from the normal legislative processes. Something like a national referendum, with clear choices. Maybe we should invite Putin to conduct it.
