It's a tough question. One thing I told my kids is that while it's sad and horrible that they need to be more afraid of an incident like this than I was...in general, they are living in a safer world every minute of every day than I was, or the generation before that. They should feel safer overall in their life, less likely to be the victim of a murder or violent crime. Not that it makes this any better, but I just tried to bring some perspective.
The bottom line is that there is flat out going to be a limit to how much you can infringe a right in the constitution, which makes "what other countries did" interesting at most, but mostly useless. As I told my daughter when she pulled the old "musket" deal...do you think the founding fathers imagined the internet? The first amendment protected freaking pamphlets posted on walls. Is she ok with government censoring the internet as a result? Because an AR looks a lot more like a musket with similar properties than a pamphlet looks like Snapchat. That's not to take a stand on whether the 2nd amendment is good or bad...just some perspective about what we're dealing with and the reality of some of the most restrictive measures. Unless you think there is some chance of 2A appeal, you need to work within what you've got.
I think you need to make it easier for law enforcement to intervene and take guns from people that are problematic. I think the idea of a gun restraining order has promise.
I think you need to make background checks universal and more foolproof. I also don't know if this stands up constitutionally, but when a background check fails on a really bad person, with a violent history, etc...not sure that's not worth LE stopping by for a little chat. If there was some way to cross reference credible concerns reported about people with attempts to buy guns, etc. Whatever we can think about to allow intervention without trampling due process rights.
I think you have to highly reconsider exempting person to person sales from regulation. Perhaps force person to person sales to be made through a consignment at an authorized dealer, so checks could be properly made. We have other products, like cigarettes and prescription drugs, that you can't sell person to person.
I think you definitely have to look at some of the modifications around bump stocks and high capacities. I'm open to regulating ammo to some extent, but I'm not sure how practical that would actually be.
I think if activists and noisemakers and politicians would stand up and universally acknowledge constitutional limits means there will be a limit on how far regulation can go, it would help. Because no matter how often they say "We're not going to take away your guns", the current running just below the surface is usually "we'd like to take away all guns." The political side of this makes sure the gun control side keeps the most radical activists stoked, and spooks gun people who are for open to reasonable measures. Some of the "blood on your hands" rhetoric coming out is very destructive, because the thinking is "If you literally think I am a child murderer because I own a gun or am an NRA member, then you can't tell me you don't want all my guns. You just said I'm a child murderer."
On the other side, I think the NRA has largely outlived their value, and the right needs to consider letting them fall away. This is largely their own fault, as they've become mostly a partisan, political Republican group, instead of a non-partisan single issue action group. And the amount of money they donate isn't that great. I don't think Republicans are well served by NRA affiliation now, and I don't think the NRA has been a reasonable, helpful voice in the debate for a couple decades. Gun owners need better representation in this discussion.
And I think extreme security measures for schools are coming. You can definitely fix this, you just have to be willing to pay the price, like we did with airlines. I told my kids that they're going to tell THEIR kids about how they just walked in and out of school like nothing. Just like the old-timers used to talk about just walking through the airport and onto a plane with their bag with no security, flying on each others tickets, etc.
But at the end of the day, this will eventually recede. Unfortunately, this is the "act out" dejour for the disturbed, deranged loser looking to thrash out at the world. Like hijackings and assassinations, this will pass when it no longer gets the desired effect, or it's no longer "easy". I do wish the national media would virtually not cover it...I'm not convinced that the national news coverage serves the public, and I'm pretty sure it exacerbates future events by showing how it's done, how big an impact it has, etc. The media doesn't cover suicides because they are contagious...I wonder how much some media restraint around these outside of the local community effected would take the edge off of these. I know that's not going to happen.
