Not Event, Process

 I do not think there is a fix for the USA's gun problem.

Now, keep in mind that I fancy myself a bit of a wordsmith and I chose each word in that sentence with intentionality.  Luckily, in this age of wonders I can help you understand that which I write.  Let me hook you up with some punctuation and such.

I do not think there is "a" fix for the USA's gun problem. 

See the difference?

The USA has a history of gun violence.  We used increasingly sophisticated firearms to forcibly take the land from the indigenous peoples that lived here for millennia before the arrival of Europeans in any significant number.  We used firearms as a routine tool in the efforts to keep slaves from escaping.  Then we used firearms to intimidate the freed slaves.  When the folks that mined the coal and the gold and other things decided that they should be fairly paid for their efforts, the oligarchs of the day sent in guys with firearms to convince them to shut up.  They did the same when factory workers thought they should not have to work themselves to death for nearly nothing.

Though the ability to read was not necessarily ubiquitous, the so-called "pulp" novels lionized outlaws and lawmen in the old West through the telling of a mixture of truth and fiction that all but worshiped firearms competence.  The entertainment aspect of firearms did nothing but expand once video recording became possible.

The highest honors given in the military are generally awarded to those that did some incredibly brave shit while being shot or at least shot at OR for doing some incredibly brave shit while shooting or shooting at other humans.  Guys that have never even been to a big city, much less a different country can purchase all of the gear and guns that Hollywood tells us the truly bad dudes in the military use.  That's right, you too can be a Special Forces Operator without bothering to get in shape, join the military, learn military history or philosophy, learn hand-to-hand combat.  All you have to do is to get the right gun(s) and you are just as sexy as any other steely-eyed operator with a scruff beard and a thousand yard stare.

According to where in the nation you reside or visit, you could feasibly encounter venomous snakes, mountain lions, bobcats, black bear, grizzly bear, wolves, wild boar, coyotes, or a host of other wild animals.  Over the years and locales, some of those animals have been infected with rabies or hazardous parasites.  Firearms marketing and Hollywood have convinced us that a firearm is the only reasonable protection from any threat of that type.

Of course, the USA is rather famously a "melting pot".  There are people in the nation that don't look like you and weren't raised like you.  You simply have to have a gun to protect you from those who speak different languages or have a different accent or who eat spicier food than you enjoy (/sarcasm).

My descriptions of reasons to have/carry a firearm are not thought or intended to be comprehensive.  Rather they are meant to demonstrate my initial point.  If you were to ban firearms marketing or force Hollywood to cease glamorizing gun culture, it would not change history and it would not affect population numbers of fauna that have made their home here.

If we are to have a positive effect on gun culture, the changes would have to be incredibly broad.  Those changes would have to include things for which we have shown damn little appetite in this nation.  There would have to be an educational aspect to teach respect for the local wildlife.  There would have to be an economic aspect to get folks that make their money from the manufacture and sales of firearms onboard.  We would need coordinated and comprehensive cultural exposure programs so as to make foreign looking/sounding people less scary.  Songs of peace and love can't do it alone but they certainly should be in the mix.

There is not and cannot be "a" fix for our issues.  Like damn near everything else we deal with, gun control would have to be a process - NOT an event.  There is no switch to throw.  The goal is of sufficient importance to justify our continued efforts but, we need to temper our expectations of speed and effectiveness.  At the end of the day, there are a couple of things you need to be hyper aware of.  If someone says "All you need to do is this one thing" they are either lying, stupid or some combination of the two.  If someone says "There is nothing to be done, it is what it is" they most likely count the firearms industry as a source of their money or power and they do not want that to change.

Do not let perfect be the mortal enemy of significantly better.  Change is a constant in the universe.  We will change.  The only question is of who we let direct that change.  I think it is time that we let sanity drive for a bit.