The only fitting response to a terrible crime like this is silence or prayer. The idea that acts of mass murder reflect Hollywood violence is absurd; you can’t get more violent than King Lear. It’s true that guns are more convenient than hatchets as mass-murder weapons; they are also more convenient for self-defense. Defense and attack are generally on par in the long blood-stain of human history, and this is the wrong moment for political agitation for or against gun control. (If such laws really did “control” guns it might be different. But as matters stand, if we outlaw guns, we had better outlaw crime also.) A whole generation has been reared, in many parts of society, without the moral compass of biblical religion. Does that make any difference to the rate of violent crime? I don’t know and, again, this is the wrong moment to argue about it. In human life, savagery is a given. God knows we all wish it weren’t.