I mean, I overheard my coworkers discussing pretty awful talking points. Ex: saying that gun control won't work because we'll just be killing each other with swords.
Which ignores the fact that its a lot harder to kill 18-children + 1 teacher with a sword, than it is to kill the same number with a gun.
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There's also the discussion point where "background checks won't have any effect", except we know that this person legally purchased a gun just days before deciding to shoot his grandma (and continued the shooting-spree into this school).
Just giving that person maybe 2-weeks of break between buying the gun, and having the gun, could have been the time needed for that person to calm down internally and find himself. As long as people can walk into a gunstore, pickup a gun the same day, they can execute these power-fantasy moves.
I'm not sure if a background check would work in this case. But any kind of "innate delay" to the gun buying process, to give any would-be mass shooter some time to think it over, would almost certainly reduce the amount of gun violence. Almost all major mass shootings in the USA for the past decade seemed to be with a very, very, very recently bought gun (within a week or two).
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The "background-check" argument seems to point out the issues of spouse-abuse as a high correlation to mass gun shootings. It'd probably work in other cases, but not this most recent shooting.
The "background check" against racism might work, since just a few days ago there was a racially motivated mass shooting.
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In any case, there's a lot of bad talking points on this subject, pretty much espoused by everybody? I'm not entirely sure how to move forward with discussion.
