In your story, the closest supervising authority (the parents) had an extreme capabilities of surveillance, attention, and control. They were painfully aware of the details of their son's mental problems, and were applying themselves to helping him. At any point, they could have done some of { get rid of their own guns, seriously lock their guns up, not give their son a firearm, insist on fully supervising his possession/use of the gift firearm, search his belongings for any other weapons }. None of this would have required following a legal process - no crafting laws, respecting rights, nor due process in carrying them out.

And yet they still were unable to prevent this tragedy. The main thing I take away is the ultimate futility of believing that top-down control can prevent tragedies if only it is given more power!

> Our media, our politicians, and increasingly each of us - have fostered and promote an "us vs them" dichotomy amongst the population.

I'm right there with you in seeing this dynamic as ultimately one of decay. In fact I think second amendment culture functions more as a crutch that enables totalitarianism. It fosters a fallacious belief that the fight for freedom is some eventual violent confrontation rather than insidious gradual creeping.

But I maintain the burden of reform is on the government - its institutions, politicians, and the media - as it is the government which is the overwhelming aggressor. An individual that eg fantasizes about defending their family from an overzealous cop isn't actually harming anyone. And tax protesters eventually get the rats on their face.

But once bureaucrats become accustomed to entrenched authority, they succumb to fallacious thinking that they are in charge, rather than servant facilitators. Even little things like all these various "user fees" need to be fully repudiated, as they are ultimately symptoms of government agencies leveraging their power-held-in-trust to generate more revenue for themselves - ultimately that same basic "go ahead and stop us" adversarial dynamic.

> while a smaller minority "fights" among each other for control, both with agendas they believe will fix everything, when the fact is, they won't fix anything - and likely will make it worse. Or at least, that's what they say about the other side.

I'm here with you as well, but I think the statement fully applies to the gun "issue" as well.

The main profiteers of mass shootings are "news" channels, and yet they continue to blamelessly fan the flames. One specific type of weapon being a little harder to get isn't going to reduce the appeal of getting on the prime time scoreboard. But it's a simplistic divisive bikeshed narrative, right up there with how other people pee, so it get focused on.

I'd call the ultimate topic that of societal mental health, from being continually bombarded by bad news. We're getting much safer, yet "so many bad things are happening". It's true we're more connected, but that is only one part of it. Most people aren't actively seeking out tragedies to bathe in the emotion of, but rather are having tragedies pushed at them because the induced panic drives their continued attention.

I don't have an answer to this, besides hoping it's merely a phase that we'll pass out of as people get numb to and check out of mass media (including mass social media). But I'll note that an assumption that a perspective is only worthwhile if it implies a straightforward answer is essentially just another way of looking at our current problems.