The Answer to the Gun Problem

Greetings, gentle readers.
I recently spent a ridiculous amount of time and column inches rambling about the reasons why it is impossible to create a normal and civil conversation about the number of mass shootings in the United States.  Before I could reach my conclusions about how to transcend those discussions and achieve consensus, I was overcome by exhaustion and forced to abbreviate my observations.
Thankfully for those that wish to follow my ideas and cannot wait for my body to achieve the sort of physical condition to mechanically express the logical conclusions of the arguments, there are other minds at work in the wide world.
As a prime example, I would like to refer you to this article:  HERE.  It does the exact opposite of what I've done — it skips past all of the awful rhetorical tricks and procedural sidesteps and gets to the actual problem.
To summarize: there is no quick answer, no bill, no regulation, no executive order that will cure this epidemic.  To even insist that there is one is foolish.
Here's the thing - the culture is violent, and this is the one occasion where trickle-down works. 
If the government establishes its core values as those of compassion and caring, this culture of violence will decay.  Other than that, here are four steps to stop your citizens from murdering one another.

1. Stop drone-bombing countries like Pakistan, Yemen, and Chad.  If you want to declare war, declare war.  These extra-jurisdictional killings are awful, illegal, and set a bad precedent for your own children.
2. Admit refugees.  If you are going to widow women and orphan children, consider their lives valuable enough to consider them worthy of admission to your awful country.
3. Stop occupying countries.  Nothing screams hypocrisy like enforcing military law on a bunch of innocent people while screaming that you are forcing liberty down their collective throats.  After 20 years, Afghanistan doesn't seem to have created a functioning democracy.  Conclusion:  Americans are terribly good at shooting people in the cause of democracy, but have no idea how it works in any sort of practical manner.
4. Stop creating or supplying insurgencies.  Why did five American Marines wash up downstream in Niger last year?    Isn't it odd how American Marines show up whenever a trade negotiation for natural resources goes sour?

In short, take everything the Nixon administration learned, add a couple of Carter things in, and then ignore everything else since, and you might be able to form a foreign policy.
In short-term, band-aid solutions won't work.  Politicians might be able to score points from little policy changes, but those victories will be meaningless.  The country as a whole must be able to shift from an ignorant global bully to a an entity capable of contributing to significant economic and climate change. 
A country committed to values of compassion and accomplishment could be one that could establish public works programs of renewable energy sources and develop technologies for the stars.  A country mired in entrenching its citizens in centuries-old cycles of poverty is destined to reduce society's ambitions indefinitely.

Meanwhile...

• We Could Live, by Big Sugar
• If That Were Me, by Melanie Chilsholm
• Come to California, by Matthew Sweet
• Halloween, by Aqua
• Follow Your Daughter Home, by The Guess Who
• Suspicious Minds, by Fine Young Cannibals

And that is all there is left of me.
Good night England and the Colonies.
Cheers,
—mARKUS