Agreed that statistics can prove anything but however you slice and dice it the US has significantly more guns per head of population and more gun related homicides than any European country
For some example figures see here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_firearm-related_death_rate
Did you notice that if you remove suicides, you lose about 60% of the gun deaths (at least in the US)?
In the US you see private militia armed with semi-automatic weapons involved in situations that would typically be the domain of the police. I get these guys are acting legally but it's a very different culture to other places and fosters an attitude that anyone within reason is perfectly sound to bear such weapons.
These private militia are not nearly as common as you think. The vast majority of gun owners are not in a militia. They are just people, like the kind that got shot up the other day.
Knee jerk legislation will not work but if the will of the American people is to prevent these events from happening, minimise the risk and scale of attacks then there has to be dialogue. Perhaps there is legislation that could help. I would say there has to be a cultural change and that can only come from within the community of people that most cherish the right to bear arms, IMHO it is only when those who wish to have the right to own any quantity of whatever they like start to put the rights of the nation as a whole to be safer that a real cultural shift will happen.
Here is the crux of the matter. I have read the above about 10 times. I would really like to know what you mean by a "cultural change" specifically. From above it really sounds like those that "most cherish the right to bear arms" should start to put the "rights of the nation as a whole" first by changing their mind on cherishing guns. In other words, the cultural change you speak of is having everyone agree to give up owning weapons. Correct me if I am wrong.
Also, what does it mean for the "nation as a whole" to have rights? What is the right that a nation has in this case?