I see comments on how society has long had guns, and of how everybody had a gun in their truck when they went to high school back in the day, and yet none of them ended up being mass shooters. What has changed? the commentors ask, and then answer that, noting society has.
They are right.
But, they are passing off the influence of guns a little too easily. Not everyone is affected the same way by owning and carrying a gun. Some people are more predisposed to misusing them than others. Ninety-nine out of a hundred might not misuse them, but it only takes one to have a mass shooting. Has society changed? Perhaps more people are predisposed. Then, again, perhaps it isn't that society, itself, has changed, but that the idea of using guns this way is now out there. Bad ideas spread. Copycats follow. First Columbine, then a trail of other mass shootings.
At any rate, guns remain part of the equation. They are the tool being used, so you cannot say they are not part of the equation. Compare it to drunk driving. If a person gets drunk, but doesn't have a car to drive, he can't get on the highway and kill someone.
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