Go upstream to the parents, seller of the gun, the manufacture, etc. and force the god damned courts to further opine and rule on liability.

can be done to the retailer or manufacturer.

but it's ultimately up to the prosecutor for how novel an approach they want to take within the framework of the law.

Dram shop type liability approach; piercing the corporate veil; etc. are all possible approaches.

If he bought them legally, it means he went to the local police department, where they did a background check and issues a permit to purchase.

He then went to a gun store, where he had to show said permit, and they did another federal background check before the sale. Or, he found someone with a used gun, they both went to the gun store, the store ran the background check for them, and the sale was made.

And if all this was done, the gun store, distributor and manufacturer would all be legally shielded from liability.

There's not much in this chain of command to prosecute.

negligence can arise pretty easily if any step was missed; if not, and again if there is a prosecutorial willingness to seek & develop a novel approach to liability, then I am hopeful there will be a prosecutor willing to take up the approach (not unlike what the NAACP did with their efforts in the 1940s-1960s)

Ultimately, this comes down to our priorities and our collective will. From where I sit, the protections and idealizations that weapons manufacturers and their supporters receive come at the expense of our national welfare.

National Guard troops in Washington, DC are now carrying weapons...






https://www.cnn.com/2025/08/24/politics/national-guard-dc-weapons

Guns are the problem.

There are too many guns and it is too easy to access them in this country.

And that anyone with Belief X or Identity Y or Belief Z or Identity W or whatever who is not thinking rationally and can use that easy access to guns is the problem that we find ourselves in today.

A nut killed 167 people (including children) with a van loaded with common fertilizer.
Maybe we should focus on the spread of hatred: something we can actually do something about? Are we unwilling to give that up?

I think both tamping down on hate (a sufficiently determined person with the intent of engaging in deadly violence will always find a way to kill) and reducing/eliminating easy access to weapons that make the use of deadly force too easy are necessary.

Other countries have had great success in tamping down on violent death by regulating/banning the guns used. By all means let's temper hatreds, but let's also take steps we know are effective in disarming those who will inevitable be touched by hatred despite our best efforts.

argue with that logic. However, the very thing I am preaching about is a topic that gets absolutely zero discussion even though it is a thing that we can ALL do, right now, with no political or legislative involvement at all. There isn't a single OP here discussing it, and scant few even acknowledge the problem. Frankly, I'm convinced that many enjoy the anger and hatred, and they are unwilling to ever give it up for any reason. All we have to do is stop hating each other and stop spreading it like the plague that it is. This shooter was reportedly transgender. So why would this person just decide to go out and shoot other humans? While we may not now or ever know the reasons with certainty (since he's dead), I'd almost bet money that he was the target of hatred from others. Cultivating this hatred has become the norm, and it is manifesting itself in very predictable ways, and a gun isn't what caused all of that.

.. is also coming from some very high places.

it is coming from every direction and it never, ever stops.

It's a basic human weakness. Demonization and dehumanization are pretty much prerequisites for mass violence, and to varying degrees have become characteristic of our public discourse (in politics and even entertainment and sports).

Efforts to acknowledge/address this tend to come off as superficial or naive, in part because the very dynamic you allude to predisposes us to cynicism. Reminds me debate questions challenging candidates to praise their foes in at least some small way (e.g. from 2016):

The MAGAt moniker, for instance, is dehumanizing and quite acceptable here on DU, for reasons I can sympathize with. I don't think the weight of hatred is remotely equal on "both sides;" proposals to detain, deport, or execute groups on the right are basically nonexistent, while the rhetoric on the right is much more explicitly violent. But self-awareness demands that we recognize the left shares in the same frailties as the right, whether or not we indulge our worst instincts to precisely the same level.

is a great example, even though subtle. Neither candidate was able to say something nice without using it as a vehicle to add "also" stuff. Maybe not the most common example since they were fighting for the Presidency on live TV, but it did include the positive.
I watch that and it actually makes me feel a little more free, as if there is actually underlying hope that we can shed this albatross of hatred. Life would be so much better for everyone if we could function in that manner.
Hatred consumes all and produces nothing but more hatred.