Thoughts on the Kalamazoo shooting
I found it noteworthy that the Uber driver who went on this massacre had neither a criminal record nor a mental health record. Some reporters were grasping at straws that he had traffic tickets from 1998 to 2006.
What I think the issue here is the ease of which a person can acquire a firearm, regardless of reputation or history. The mere fact of having to take fingerprints and having to go through a fair non arbitrary process to acquire a firearm discourages the would be psychopaths with clean records from getting a gun.
I'll concede that gun licensing does not deter all gun crimes and may even cause a rise in some other violent crimes as a result of lack of fear of self defense. But I seriously can't remember that last time there was a mass shooting in New York State or Hawaii, states with strict gun control laws.
Gun licensing for all people should be required. This should even include being able to participate at a gun range (so we don't have a repeat of Sandy Hook).
People can be mentally ill without going to a doctor. Kalamazoo should teach us, rather that simply stigmatizing voluntarily receiving mental health care, we should rather have smarter gun control laws that actually prevent guns from being so readily available even to the undiagnosed.