Other than the guy who shot up the Republicans at the practice for a charity ball game which was obviously about politics, I'm not certain about the degree of political influence on shootings. Disgruntled teenagers who shoot up a school are probably not politically motivated since at that age they are likely oblivious to partisan politics. I have some very Democrat friends who are highly anti-gay. People tend to look for political connections in such things to support the demonization process.

Does our fascination with violent movies and video games play into it? I think it does. How many people, left and right, have paid money to watch a war or police/crime movie that is all about violence? Perhaps most people. Where is huge sums of money spent making movies? Violent scenes. That fascination is for the most part apolitical.

In Steve's most recent commentary he mentioned people fearing different things. I don't fear firearms, probably because they have been a presence for my entire life. I'll confess that I fear the potential tyranny of governments. No individual nutjob can come within orders of magnitude of the horror's governments are capable of and they use demonization to get their citizens to do their bidding. Does this play into our views? I think so, and at a very fundamental level.