I'm beginning think that, of all the issues being addressed, the fundamental one that might most easily be agreed upon, the one to start with, is access to guns. You might add knives to that but everyone need a knife.
The recent massacres, like the ones in the UK, happened because people who should not have guns managed to own or acquire guns in one way or another. The issue doesn't stop with those who have personality disorders. There's a case for teaching teenagers to use guns in a controlled environment but should a 19 year old have a shotgun at home that his young brother can get hold of and take to school? Should a mother have guns at home where her not quite normal son lives? Should someone own a type of gun that he has no legitimate need to possess?
I don't know the detail of US licence laws and they seem to vary greatly from State to State. That might suggest that laws on the subject should be set at Federal level with account taken of local needs. That would enable the whole nation to benefit from background checks, regulations for private sales, minimum ages, a psychological assessment, questions about the purpose to which a gun would be put, checks on storage, registration and, perhaps, other measures. Something along those lines might bring about some agreement between the various representative bodies because they all seem to accept that it's people as well as guns that are the problem.
