duderThe argument here shouldn't be about gun control - but it will be. The argument shouldn't be about what made this person do this, but it will be. I've already heard video games, facebook and reality TV being blamed. None of those things killed those people today. The guns didn't kill those people. They didn't decide to spontaneously fire their bullets into people. A very sick person made all those decisions. It was not "easy" for him to obtain firearms. In fact, Connecticut and New Jersey have extremely strict gun control, schools are a gun-free zone and the shooter was below the legal age to lawfully own guns. We don't need more control of guns, we need to make help for sick people more available, and more acceptable. Mental health in America is a taboo subject - if you openly talk about your feelings, you think you're going to be persecuted. The law failed everyone who was killed today, but not because it was done with a gun, but because the shooter didn't get the help he needed. He would have killed today, whether it was with guns, explosives, knives, poisons, or even his own bare hands. He didn't get the help he needed - we let him down as a society - but not because he got some guns, but because the underlying reasons or conditions that made him want to kill couldn't be treated in time.
Not that sick, though. Guns are an impersonal weapon, and a very non-intimate way to commit acts of violence. It is much harder to attack someone with a knife than it is to shoot someone with a gun. Without guns, the attacker would need a whole new level of psychosis to attempt the same thing.
Not that I'm saying you're wrong though. The only reason China and Japan have such extreme control over firearms is because the government actively purged the country of any firearm they did not control. That would require a level of governmental authority that half the U.S. would balk at.
It may not have been easy to get the guns, but it wasn't that hard either. Legally, yes, it can be difficult to obtain a gun. But each new gun issued isn't any harder to steal, borrow, or give away than, I dunno, a book or something. And without access to guns, the attack would most likely have not happened at all. Or, if it had, it would be more likely to end up as the China school crisis did, with no fatalities.