It was almost a perfect confluence of events that got Trump into office. The press literally let him ramble on never really challenging him on anything, the latent racism that apparently Trump was appealing to made people come out in droves.

President Donald Trump has privately expressed a desire for all drug dealers in the US to be executed, according to the news website Axios.
Trump also reportedly commented favorably on the drug policies of Singapore and the Philippines, two countries where drug dealers are executed.
Kellyanne Conway said Trump wanted to focus on high-volume dealers

But the tip they got from someone who knew him that they thought he was planning a shooting, I don't know what that entailed.

Anyway, whoever this was said that you really couldn't tell a whole lot just by looking at the numbers, that in many cases there may have been nothing to the visits, other than that there was a requirement that one be made if a call was received - and there's no way to know whether they were called because of something Cruz did, if it was a neighbor making a complaint they had to check out, or what.

The more I read about this kid, the more I realize that the system failed him.  According to the NYT, there was an investigation done by the Department of Children and Families, which was subsequently closed because the agency determined Cruz was not a threat to himself of others.

A Florida social services agency conducted an in-home investigation of Nikolas Cruz after he exhibited troubling behavior nearly a year and a half before he shot and killed 17 people at his former high school in Florida, a state report shows.

The agency, the Florida Department of Children and Families, had been alerted to posts on Snapchat of Mr. Cruz cutting his arms and expressing interest in buying a gun, according to the report. But after visiting and questioning Mr. Cruz at his home, the department determined he was at low risk of harming himself or others.

The disciplinary record from the school system contained even more signs that something was wrong:

Broward County Public Schools disciplinary records obtained on Saturday by The New York Times show Mr. Cruz had a long history of fights with teachers, and was frequently accused of using profane language with school staff. He was referred for a "threat assessment" in January 2017, the last entry in his record, two months after the Department of Children and Families closed its separate investigation into Mr. Cruz's worrisome behavior.

Howard Finkelstein, the Broward County public defender, whose office is representing Mr. Cruz, said the report was further evidence that Mr. Cruz needed serious help long before the shooting but did not get enough of it.

"This kid exhibited every single known red flag, from killing animals to having a cache of weapons to disruptive behavior to saying he wanted to be a school shooter," Mr. Finkelstein said. "If this isn't a person who should have gotten someone's attention, I don't know who is. This was a multisystem failure."

It is also important to note that he was identified at the age of four as being developmentally delayed;  he was also autistic, had ADHD and was suffering from depression.

And he was legally able to buy a weapon, a combination that had dire consequences for 17 people.

Clearly, he had problems, one of which was not being well-served by institutional support services.  He was angry and adrift and no one was helping him deal with those things.  How was this going to ever have a good outcome?  

But what happened isn't about being mentally ill, any more than it is about God having been taken out of the schools, or parent's divorcing or the schools not being able to discipline: it's about the guns.  The guns that are so easy to get.

Yes, there were warning signs, a lot of them.  The kinds of warning signs that should have prevented Cruz from being able to buy weapons.

Just because there isn't one all-encompassing piece of legislation that solves the gun problem, doesn't mean we can't or shouldn't take some steps in that direction.  

Federal law requires licensed firearms dealers to maintain records of gun sales indefinitely, including information about the firearm(s) being purchased, as well as the purchaser.2 Federal law prohibits the federal government from collecting firearm sales records in a central repository, however. Without a central repository of all firearm sales records, gun tracing is a slow, cumbersome process.

I've come to the decision that I am willing to give up some 2nd Amendment rights to live in a society where I don't have to be patted down, groped, wanded or pass through metal detectors in order to attend a concert. Visit a government office. See a veteran's rep. Take public transportation.

We need a culture change. It's not the wild west anymore. People should not be allowed to walk into a restaurant or grocery shop with rifles slung over their shoulder in a civil society (I'm talking open carry laws).