Liberals should be honest enough to say that entertainment commodities that glorify gun violence are reflections of the society, and conservatives need to be honest enough to admit that entertainment reflects values but in doing so also reproduces those values. It's not either-or. And again, it misses the point. What separates our society from Switzerland and Norway is our intensely violent history and our national predisposition to solve problems by force. And the Swiss and Norwegians have elements of functional social democracy with comparatively little inequality and poverty, a massive social safety net, an equal and high quality public education system that emphasizes critical thinking over test scores, and thus immunizes much of the population from the siren call of consumerism.
Economic insecurity is a very distant threat.
In short, the cooperative impulse is still more powerful than the competitive impulse. The community impulse is still stronger than individualism. So their guns go to the range or lay in their bureau drawers, unraised in anger. Competitive individualism is our barren and lonely credo. It has cut us off from one another.