The New York Times looked at the question of why there are so many mass shootings in the United States compared to other countries:
When the world looks at the United States, it sees a land of exceptions: a time-tested if noisy democracy, a crusader in foreign policy, an exporter of beloved music and film.
But there is one quirk that consistently puzzles America’s fans and critics alike. Why, they ask, does it experience so many mass shootings?
Perhaps, some speculate, it is because American society is unusually violent. Or its racial divisions have frayed the bonds of society. Or its citizens lack proper mental care under a health care system that draws frequent derision abroad.
These explanations share one thing in common: Though seemingly sensible, all have been debunked by research on shootings elsewhere in the world. Instead, an ever-growing body of research consistently reaches the same conclusion.
The only variable that can explain the high rate of mass shootings in America is its astronomical number of guns.
There is far more in their full article but the primary factor comes down to the astronomical number of guns. If we agree that school shootings must be stopped, this leaves us with one conclusion. Something must be done about the number of guns. We can debate the specifics, and we can strive to find ways to allow those who use guns for legitimate reasons to still own guns, but any solution is going to require reducing the number of guns. Or do conservatives think that killing children is acceptable?
Conservatives will claim that restrictions on gun ownership violate the Second Amendment. I don’t take their selective adherence to Constitutional rights all that seriously when they are frequently the same people who are willing to see violations of First Amendment rights, with many outright opposing separation of church and state.
The big time mass shootings regularly rely on high capacity magazines for assault rifles with a high rate of fire, and sometimes after-market modifications that produce an enhanced rate of fire even closer to that of a fully automatic weapon – bump stocks, for example.
Forbid civilian ownership of such high capacity magazines and impose legal limits directly on rate of fire and you can cut down drastically on the death toll of such incidents.
Oh, and the Times has joined the Republicans, whose aim is to direct blame onto anybody but themselves and their stupid gun politics, in urging policing of suspicious characters that undermines privacy and infringes civil liberties as "the real solution to the real problem."
They have joined Republicans who are only too glad to blame local authorities for not using Florida's involuntary commitment law and the FBI for not have investigated Nikolas Cruz and then "done something".
But the real problems are the Second Amendment and the all but universal conviction among Americans that it protects a natural, moral, God-given individual right to own and carry firearms.
And the real solution is to repeal the first and underwrite an extensive and long enduring propaganda against the second.