In the world of investing, there is a concept of risk-minimization whereby you lower your risk of loss or volatility by spreading your eggs across several baskets. However, one risk you cannot diversity away is the "systematic risk" or the risk inherent in the system...call it market risk or whatever, the basic reality is some baseline level of risk will ALWAYS exist, and you can't avoid it.
The same applies to America, her freedoms, and insane acts of violence.
Laws that support, life, liberty, and property are right and proper. Many laws act as a deterrent and will stop people on the margin from doing bad things...this is akin to diversifying away the non-systematic risk. Thus laws criminizing murder, are right and proper.
However, gun control is targeted at the systematic risk. And what did we say about that risk, kids? Riiiiight....It is unavoidable..
In a nation like America where freedom reigns and the individual trumps the collective, dopey ideas like assault weapon bans, magazine capacity limits, monthly caps on gun purchases do not help. That's because the risk of a maniac going on a killing spree is non-diversifiable. It is idiosyncratic.
The adults in the room understand on some baseline level, in a relatively free society of 330MM people, you'll always have a few pathological maniacs who will kill. Thus, random acts of violence like this tragic shooting, are the systematic risk of a free society.
Sure, maybe some laws can help, like liberal application of the 2nd Amendment and concealed carry. However, in large measure, unless you weld a GoPro to the heads of 330MM people with central monitoring in DC (and even that wouldn't be perfect...after all people in jail still get drugs and weapons), psychos gonna psycho.
The only way to achieve the numbers Trump20122020 posted (which, by the way, need to be population adjusted), is to shred civil liberties. THAT is the ugly truth that statists suppress in these debates.
Indeed, the problem arises when pathological politicians propose legislation like gun control - aimed at the systematic risk, which by definition you can't evade/will always be there - that simply erodes the freedoms of law-abiding citizens.
Is this by design? I doubt bureaucrats are that smart, but I don't doubt the darkness of their souls.