Of course it's the guns... and the mental illness...
Of course it is the guns. Anyone suggesting that mass shootings are not somehow connected to the availability of guns is being weird for the sake of being weird.
And the idea that people will "always find a way to do this sort of thing" is almost too dumb to parse. Police have been keeping records for a long time and police have always taken notice of individuals massacring large numbers of their fellows. We are not left to guess as to whether it used to be equally common for a guy to pitchfork 70 people. Society is much less violent than it used to be, but these mass killings by individuals are more common than they used to be. The mass-shooting is a particular pathology.
Attributing these incidents to mental illness is true, but about as useful as attributing them to god's will. One might as well say that guard-rails are stupid because the real problem is gravity.
Unless one has a plan to eliminate mental illness entirely then society will always have to deal with the expression of mental illness. For a variety of reasons, a certain number of mentally ill people today express that illness in mass shootings.
To say that media violence, video games, fighting wars and availability of weapons are not factors is silly. The mode of expression is largely cultural. We have a certain number of suicidal impulses being externalized into apocalyptic impulses, and of course the broader culture is involved.
It does not, however, follow that banning guns, video games, action movies, TV news or military interventions is a sensible response.
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