Many of them, including most in Europe don't have the War on Drug policies that we have that focus on punishment rather than treatment. Indeed, most countries of Europe and places such as Canada have more therapeutic based criminal justice systems.

Most of the countries people point to in these arguments (Canada, GB, Norway, etc) also have socialized medicine, a much greater social safety net, and they don't practice the form of dog eat dog capitalism that we do.
Other countries like Japan are based on kinship and authoritarian models of society and government that we find either strange or repugnant. Japan, for instance, originally banned guns 300 years ago because they destablized their feudal society by allowing commoners to kill Samurai. Now they've modernized in many ways -forced by stronger powers and the march of technology. Yet they still make it next to impossible for even fellow asians to emigrate to their shores or be truly assimilated when there. In short, they are the exact opposite of the "open borders" philosophy that this website and most of the left promotes and that the US has been following the past 40 years. Trying to compare us to them is rather crazy.

Then we get to countries like Switzerland and Israel where guns are pretty widely available in private hands (though not as easily obtained or as prevalent as the USA) and yet they have a small fraction of the assault rates via firearm the US does. Clearly there are cultural differences involved, and I would argue social policy differences as well.

Meanwhile, let's take a look at the US. In the US most gun crimes tend to be concentrated in terms of rates and usually absolute numbers as well in central cities and inner ring suburbs. Meanwhile, state by state the suburban and rural counties tend to have much higher rates of legal firearms ownership yet far lower rates of firearms violence. It should also be pointed out that the US has an intensely individualistic culture and this culture is contained in a country that is the size of many small Continents. Most other countries are rather crowded , with a few notable exceptions. Meanwhile, despite New York City, there are parts of New York state where you can drive for two or three hours and hardly see anything but trees - and there is alot more land out west in the "flyover country" so many of you seem to hate or despise.

People who like to think are now "cultural elites."

the following massacres occurred in so-called "gun-free zones" that gun-control advocates naively thought would help prevent gun violence rather than encourage it

The fact that some shootings occur in gun-free zones proves that gun-free zones help prevent violence rather than encourage it.

From my POV, there is no logical reason for any ordinary citizen to need an assault weapon or devises that allow a person to shot a large number of bullets in rapid succession.

Although I do not hunt, I think others should be allowed to engage in that activity. I also believe that if a so called hunter needs an assault weapon or large capacity magazines to bag his game then he is a p!ss poor excuse for a hunter, a possible danger to other hunters in the area and maybe needs to take up a different activity.

If the only reason for these types of weapons is because it is fun, well tough, a lot of things that might be considered fun are against the law because there is a real potential for harm to society.

1.  He has an EX-girlfriend.

2.  He quit his job and gave/sold away his possessions, a big red flag for wanting to commit suicide.  (Ostensibly he was to move to Hawaii, but there is no verification that I could find.)

3.  Roommate said he was acting "weird."

4.  He was estranged from his aunt who had raised him for most of his life after his mother died, and hasn't spoken to her in 4 years.  Also the aunt won't say why.  Could indicate more serious issues.

5.  Stealing a friend's gun if you can't get one of your own seems quite logical, actually.