People who want to cause harm to others and chaos will do so, no matter what. In China and Japan they very strict gun laws and yet these are numerous stories of people who storm schools and slit the throats of children. If you remember the last Olympics held in China, a Western couple was attacked by a knife wielding assailant who fatally stabbed the father in law of one of the coaches that participated in the event. No guns, no problems - just find other weapons.
In my city when I applied for my gun license, the chief wouldn't give me a license to carry because I "know nothing about guns." Never mind that I took courses, went through a background check and had no criminal history. This same chief had a cop under his command that regularly beat his mother, yet they never demanded his gun. He finally beat her into a coma, she later died and only then was he ordered to surrender his gun - then it came out in the papers that it was common knowledge at his work that he abusing his mother but no one felt it necessary to formally intervene for the poor woman. Meanwhile, I have a license to carry and I've been a life long, law abiding citizen. I love and take care of my parents too.
Also, in a nearby city where I live, there was a shooting where one cop shot a fellow cop before turning the gun on himself (love triangle - the cop that was shot was having an affair with the other cop's wife). In my agency, we had a shooting out in the west coast where an agent fired on his supervisor and was in turn shot (fatally) by another agent. Just because someone's in authority, doesn't mean they obey the laws. What needs to happen is not more strict gun laws, but severe consequences for those that break the laws.
Criminals don't care what the laws are - mobster Sammy the Bull Gravano used to say that he loved gun control because it meant his target couldn't defend himself and made his job easier. We need to go after the criminals and make them care if they get caught. In this guy's case, you can't tell me there weren't signs - his mother knew when she heard the story it was her child. Others had to have known but no one thought to put a medical hold on this guy until he acted out. If anything, instances like these are a mental health issue; it's a failure on the medical community to act when they see that a person has the potential to be a threat. They wait until the person does something but by then there are victims. How does that prevent the problem before it explodes? My prayers to the families affected including this young man's family - who probably were unable to get him help due to his age.
