Quote Originally Posted by crazycanuck View Post
As an outsider, i'm going to probably be thwacked for this but....

I have to say...isn't it the "we must have a gun because it's in the consititution" type culture in the US that's to blame?
As a gun owner, (and yes I own a 9mm and 20 and 30 round magazines), I would say no. Please remember, that Timothy McVeigh killed 168 people with fertilizer. What a killer uses is just a tool. The user determines purpose, good or bad. What it looks like here is a case of an adult (he is 22) deciding not to get mental medical aid, not to take meds, but instead to take illegal drugs. He then reads some info about the evil of our monetary society, and blends it in his ill mind with his anti-Semitic delusions. He gets kicked out of community college as they fear he is a danger, but it does not appear they followed it up with the authorities as there was no record of this when he went to buy a gun last November as it did not show up on his NICS background check. He continues to take drugs and not see a doctor. Finally, he pops. That anyone would blame the gun is just missing what is going on.

Guns are used far more often in the U.S. to prevent crime than cause it. I have had to grab a gun in defense once, when several people dressed in black tried to come up the side of the house and get into my back yard at 1am. Thankfully, they saw it and gave some lame-o excuse and beat it quick.

Our neighbor to the south, Mexico, is dealing with drug lords running amok and the death toll there last year was 15,273 (not including crimes of passion). This is higher than the war in Afghanistan in the same time period. The citizens don't have the right to arms, and are dying like cattle; no ability to defend themselves. The drug cartels have lots of guns; they don't care about silly laws that say they can't have them. Here in the U.S. we can choose to defend ourselves. We have 3 times the population, and the right to arms, but our death toll annually is about 17,000 by comparison. I say we don't have Mexico's problem partially due to our law abiding gun owners.

Sorry for the long ramble, I'm off my soapbox now.

What happened is appalling. My heart goes out to all who are affected by this horrible tragedy. It's our mental health support that failed on several levels, but it's not going to be easy to fix. As an adult, he could refuse treatment and incarceration in an institution as he had not been found guilty of a crime before his rampage. So how does one balance our freedom against forcing someone into treatment against their will?