I've been in Ethiopia for six and a half months, and in that time span I have twice found myself explaining the United States' gun culture, lack of reasonable gun control laws, and gun-related political sensitivities to my colleagues and friends in the wake of a horrific mass shooting. When bad things happen in the US -- especially if they're related to some of our national moral failings that grate on me the most, e.g. guns, health care, and militarism -- I feel a sense of personal moral culpability, much stronger when I'm living in the US. I think having to explain how terrible and terribly preventable things could happen in my society, while living somewhere else, makes me feel this way. (This is by no means because people make me feel this way; folks often go out of their way to reassure me that they don't see me as synonymous with such things.)
I think that this enhanced feeling of responsibility is actually a good thing. Why? If being abroad sometimes puts the absurdity of situations at home into starker relief, maybe it will reinforce a drive to change. All Americans should feel some level of culpability for mass shootings, because we have collectively allowed a political system driven by gun fanatics, a media culture unintentionally but consistently glorifying mass murderers, and a horribly deficient mental health system to persist, when their persistence has such appalling consequences.
After the Colorado movie theater shooting I told colleagues here that nothing much would happen, and sadly I was right. This time I said that maybe -- just maybe -- the combination of the timing (immediately post-election) and the fact that the victims were schoolchildren will result in somewhat tighter gun laws. But, attention spans are short so action would need to be taken soon. Hopefully the fact that the WhiteHouse.gov petition on gun control already has 138,000 signatures (making it the most popular petition in the history of the website) indicates that something could well be driven through. Even if that's the case, anything that could be passed now will be just the start and it will be long hard slog to see systematic changes.
As Andrew Gelman notes here, we are all part of the problem to some extent: "It’s a bit sobering, when lamenting problems with the media, to realize that we are the media too." He's talking about bloggers, but I think it extends further: every one of us that talks about gun control in the wake of a mass shooting but quickly lets it slip down our conversational and political priorities once the event fades from memory is part of the problem. I'm making a note to myself to write further about gun control and the epidemiology of violence in the future -- not just today -- because I think that entrenched problems require a conscious choice to break the cycle. In the meantime, Harvard School of Public Health provides some good places to start.