Yesterday he was a guy who had guns. Neither good nor bad and possibly both. Something led him to make a decision to engage in violence against his co-workers. He had access to firearms which certainly facilitates a person's confidence that they can commit acts of violence and inflict a lot of damage. I would be willing to wager a substantial amount that there are an EXTREMELY SMALL amount of people who are functioning perfectly in society that just one day decide, "You know, I am going to go to .... and shoot a bunch of people." I have personally been in some rather low periods of my life, to the point where the idea of "if I happen to fall asleep and not wake up, I wouldn't mind". Never ever thinking of doing anything active. NEVER EVER EVER though of doing anything to hurt anyone. The thing is that life is difficult and things change and sometimes crises happen. Some people are resilient. Some are not. Some are introspective and inwardly focused. Some are outwardly focused. There are typically warning signs but people are worried about intruding into privacy or liability issues.
"Good guy with a gun" is a caricature of a position that is typically a right wing position which unfortunately has been also used by liberal or left leaning firearms owners as well.
There are people who own firearms who would never think to use them to commit violence. There are people who own firearms who would not ever use them to hurt anyone except in self defense. There are people who while they have not broken any laws, may be emotionally unstable and might see their firearms as a tool with which they could "take back their power" or "hurt those who hurt me". The difficulty is that there is not a clear cut way of distinguishing between those types of people.
Responses to that problem need to be comprehensive. There has to be a way to reduce the sheer number of firearms available. There has to be better ways to distinguish between the type of person who can safely own a firearm, and the type who cannot. There has to be ways to diminish the likelihood of people getting to the point where they see inflicting harm on others as a viable path. That would entail a better understanding of motivations, and of factors that facilitate violence itself. These are things that are difficult, but can be accomplished if people have the political and social will to do so.
= new reply since forum marked as read
