I'm growing increasingly convinced that the US is anomalous, in many ways, because our society is individual-focused. I believe the preoccupation with self is fundamentally responsible for the proliferation of gun violence.
But as I read in a book about systems: it's a lot more comforting to think that the problem is somewhere "out there", rather than confronting the fact that our system is setting up people to fail.
It's a lot easier to point at guns and say, "let's get these off the streets!", rather than confront the more difficult reality of everything I mentioned.