>Switzerland still has compulsory military conscription, with discharged Swiss males required until recently to keep their military weapon at home. Meaning at least one assault rifle or equivalent in almost every Swiss household. And yet the Swiss aren't shooting up their schools or conducting regular gun crime atrocities like the US.
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>It's also relatively easy to get firearms in other nations, despite what you might be told. E.g. in NZ you can purchase a semi-automatic ex-NATO battle rifle as long as you pass Police vetting to be a firearm holder- which I see the latest US shooter also sought and received.
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>So while I definitely agree that gun crime is higher where there's ready access to guns, you might want to consider what else must be going wrong in the souls of your countryfolk.
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>IMHO your biggest issue wrt stronger firearm controls is that there are already so many weapons in the USA (estimated 101 per 100 population, compared to 12 in South Africa and 6.2 in the UK) many of which are owned by proud citizens who will see it as the ultimate patriotic act to secrete caches of weapons for defense of their freedoms... with weapons then leaching from the caches for generations to come.
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>You might be better looking at the Ireland situation where terrorist crime was huge (despite gun control) until it evaporated quickly in the space of a single generation. Because of prosperity. All experience is that people with prospects and realistic expectations of a dignified worthwhile role in society, don't go around shooting up schools.

The problem I think is a combination of things. First we have a congress that won't do anything. We had a kinda assault weapon enacted in 1994 - it was a weak law because it only applied to weapons manufactured after the date of the ban's enactment, and it expired 10 years later. Can't seem to get their act together on background checks either. The other part of the problem is a mental health issue -- congress keeps taking money away from that. Ban the dang assault weapons, ban the high capacity magazines, close all the background check loopholes and make sure no one that shouldn't be having a gun doesn't get one. Spend some money on mental health and don't make our police and jailers deal with mental health problems that they're not trained to deal with. We have to start somewhere and I think these are the biggest chunks to hit first. That and deal with the horrible NRA and gun manufactures - no clue on how to handle that. It would be nice if they were simply banned from providing political donations or ads or lobbyists -- but that might be a slippery slope we don't want to go down -- but something has to give. One thing I'm 100% sure of is that doing nothing is not the right thing.

>>>..he says nothing about gun control or background checks to get a gun -- hell he didn't use the word "gun" ONE TIME in the whole speech!!!
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>IMHO that's also part of the problem- a breed of politician that thinks talking about something can solve it. Don't forget that Trump has been there for just over a year after a chain of other presidents who were there for 8 years during which they gave rousing speeches about gun control. Would you be happier if Trump followed suit, giving rousing speeches but departing office with nothing achieved on the topic?

Trump is actually making it worse though -- he signed a bill into law rolling back an Obama-era regulation that made it harder for people with mental illnesses to purchase a gun. But really I blame congress for their inaction more than I do the president. He *should* be leading and demanding that congress does something - and clearly he has no intention of doing that.