I think that’s hard to say.

A larger segment of the population owned weapons back then, but you didn’t have suburban dads with their Yeti coolers and such buying 15 AR’s because they’re cool.

I will say, though, I don’t think those types are the proximate problem. I would worry more about the person completely dissociated from society with delusions and so forth. I certainly think it’s worth exploring why he (always a he) commits spree shootings at a rate that is far, far higher than it was thirty or fifty years ago when access to weapons and the functional capacity of them is essentially unchanged.

Now, whether the suburban dad with 15 ARs’s is the ultimate problem in that he enables a system that provides extraordinarily easy access to weapons is a different question. Maybe, but it’s tough to determine how different that is from what we were like sixty years ago.

I’ve long questioned why the rise has been post-Columbine for spree shooters whereas we were basically in line with the rest of the developed world before that. What changed?

I think media, the internet, and the fracturing and atomization of American culture obviously played a factor, but I wonder if the dying off of WW2 vets played a role as well. Those men had seen extraordinarily violence in their lifetimes and perpetuated a certain kind of culture. Obviously, they abrogated any sort of responsibility towards the impoverished sectors of our nation after the 1960’s, but I don’t think it’s outlandish to think they played a role in keeping social norms intact in mainstream middle class America.