There's plenty of "intellectually stimulating" conversation about this and has been for decades. For the most part we value civility and compromise so highly that we'll accept the routine murder of children rather than pay the price of pissing a bunch of people off with gun reform.

The conversations aren't the problem, the guns are. There's not really a path to compromise here, I don't think. Either we stop having guns like we do now and a lot of people will be vocally upset, or we continue allowing the routine murder of children. Talk about it as carefully as you want, either way there's going to be conflict.