Chant of “Do Something!” breaks out as OH Gov Mike DeWine speaks at a vigil in #Dayton.

from a reader comment on The Washington Post:

Do something.
What do you want done.
I suggest
Ban assault type firearms like AK-47
Limit clip /magazine capacity.
Pass a federal Mulford Act type law that Reagan signed when governor of California which mandated  5 years in the clink for anyone carrying a loaded gun in public.
Close gun show loophole
Mandatory background checks.
Put assault type weapons under the 1934 National Firearms Act which required owners of machine guns and short barrelled long guns to  register with federal authorities and submit to fingerprinting.
Treat assault weapons the same way.

It will not be enough, but we need to do something.

What we have among the NRA gun advocates is a sickness. It is a perversion. It is a misunderstanding of history and a complete lack of common sense. Guns do not make us safer. Though a gun lobby Act prevents the government from compiling statics, we can be pretty sure that the number of guns in private hands contributes to unnecessary  death.

Until a few decades ago, only the gun lobby thought indiscriminate gun ownership was an absolute right, and they have spent fortunes getting their way. It’s time they were stopped. The second amendment did not come first in the Bill of Rights. It should not be the only right American citizens value. It should not be valued over human life. It does not reflect our current needs or the threats we face as a nation. The founders had something very different in mind when they wrote in a protection for the right to bear arms. Single shot, muzzle loader. A well-trained archer was more deadly in the early days of our nation. (No joke. Look it up. And then there is the “well-regulated militia” that we no longer rely on since we have a standing military larger than most of the rest of the world put together and hundreds of bases all over the world, including in countries with which we do not have diplomatic ties. How does any of this even make sense?)

Something must be done and now. However, if we simply ban the “bad weapons” we will continually be at the mercy of money-and-power-motivated people who will find a way to skirt the law.

It has always seemed to me that we are dealing with the very real threat of dangerous weapons backwards. Instead of saying people cannot have this or that, be positive. Approve guns. Don’t ban them. Allow the “well regulated” ownership of hunting rifles and occasional handguns. Allow ownership among people who meet a minimal standard of behavior and fitness, safety protocols and training. Make this need-based. Allow ownership among sports hunters, subsistence hunters (such as the local hunters I know who fill their freezers), people with occupations that put them at risk such as locksmiths, and collectors.

Do not approve sales to anyone of weapons that have no practical application. Several years ago on Facebook I made a similar statement and a former student responded that every hunter needed an assault-style weapon when going after deer. And then I just sat back and watched other former students who actually had hunted deer their entire life tell him he was wrong. (They might own them, just for fun, but useful for hunting? There wouldn’t be meat left to eat!)

I probably know people who will object to my proposal, but most of the actual hunters I know would be onboard, I think, even if they had to give up a couple of toys. The government should approve them, buy back the ones civilians should never have had in the first place, regulate them well.

“It’s really just scapegoating people with mental health issues,” says Dr. Seth Trueger, an assistant professor of emergency medicine at Northwestern University. And while rates of mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety and suicidal behavior are on the rise in the U.S., Trueger says other nations have similar problems and experience far fewer mass shootings. “Other countries have the same kind of mental health issues we have, the same kind of violent video games we have, the same religiosity that we have. All that stuff is just a distraction” from the need for better gun control, he says.

That position is hardly new. Studies show that a relatively small percentage of violent crimes are perpetuated by people with diagnosed mental health issues, and that gun access—not mental health symptoms—is the primary predictor of firearm violence. As a result, an increasingly large and vocal cadre of doctors has been arguing for years that gun violence is more an issue of access and regulation than it is mental health. Groups including the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Medication Association are active in advocating for stronger gun laws and more widespread violence-prevention programs, and the American Psychological Association regularly cautions against blaming mass shootings on mental health.

“Routinely blaming mass shootings on mental illness is unfounded and stigmatizing,” read a statement the APA issued on Aug. 4, after the Dayton tragedy. “The rates of mental illness are roughly the same around the world, yet other countries are not experiencing these traumatic events as often as we face them. One critical factor is access to, and the lethality of, the weapons that are being used in these crimes. Adding racism, intolerance and bigotry to the mix is a recipe for disaster.”—Time