Guns DO Kill People. (So do maniacs.)

 Having a fairly sterling crack at ruining the holiday season, a man reportedly walked into a primary school in America today and shot a bunch of people.
 Although this is a horrible thing to happen, it's depressing that it feels barely newsworthy. "Mass shooting in America" is such a common opener that several newscasters use it as a way of saying "Hello."
 To say American gun politics is complicated is laughable. Basically, everyone can have guns, and you're a Communist if you argue with that.
 My personal views on gun control in the states are a little more nuanced. Whilst I think that a blanket "let 'em all pack heat" policy is probably unwise, I would, in all honesty, probably buy a gun if I lived in America, purely because I don't want to be at a disadvantage. There are quite obviously a lot of crazy people in that country, they're all armed, and I would want to have something to defend myself with that wasn't punching if one of them opened fire at me. I honestly do have some sympathy with the viewpoint that if everyone had a gun, there would be fewer spree killings.
 I also, for the record, feel that there would be no spree killings at all if they worked harder at the whole "don't give the crazies firearms" end of things, but, again, that makes me a liberal, homosexual baby-killer in the eyes of about 50% of Americans.
 The inevitable non-debate will start in the next few days, and at the end of it, nothing will be resolved, but I've been wondering if perhaps America isn't having the wrong debate in the first place.
 The (gun)ship has sailed. There will never be a way to put America's ballistic genie back in its bottle. There are so many guns in America that there will effectively always be guns in America, and there's no point in trying to change that now.
 Except that that shouldn't matter.
 Because what nobody seems to notice is that there's a more fundamental question to answer, here: Why is everyone going so fucking crazy?!
 It may sound flippant, but it seems that there are some psychological issues that really need to be addressed in all sections of American society.
 We've already seen that postal workers and high school students seem prone to fits of murderous violence, and I'm intrigued to see what the background of the latest spree killer turns out to be.
 Something appears to be deeply, inherently broken in the national American psyche, and gun ownership doesn't really factor into it.
 As an illustration, look at Moscow. A city where there are more guns than people, and a higher percentage of alcohol-per-head than the Pogues annual concert at the Priory.
 Despite everyone being drunk and armed (~450,000 guns to ~400,000 people, fact fans) Russia as a whole features only ONCE in the top 45 results for spree killings in the "Workplace/School/Political/Religious" category of so-called "Rampage Killers." America, by contrast, has 12 of the top 45 results, including six of them in the top fifteen "workplace" killings. That's pretty astonishing, considering that the playing field consists of every nation on Earth.
 To stick with the statistical sample above, in terms of the top fifteen non-specific rampage killers (ie: people who didn't go into their office/school/church and who just went crazy wherever the mood took them) Russia crops up twice, and admittedly claims the top spot for all of Europe. However, that particular top-scoring massacre took place in 1925, which means that Russia had a period of 76 years where nobody shot a bunch of other people in a random location.
 This is, I should stress, Russia as a whole. Moscow, where the gun-per-head concentration is through the roof, doesn't even rate a mention.
 Neither does Switzerland, a country with an exceptionally high level of gun ownership. (They score about the same as Russia on the spree-killing stats.)
 Clearly, access to firearms is no barometer of the likelihood that a spree killing will occur in any given nation.
 So, once again: What the fuck is wrong with Americans?
 I don't have an answer, for once. I don't have a glib, ill-thought-out hypothesis or a silly idea.
 I just think a lot of bloodshed could be avoided in the future if Americans could work out what kept driving these people over the edge, and try to nip it in the bud.
 Or, y'know. Do the sensible thing and not sell lots of guns to people who are noticeably deranged.