I've seen speculation diaries, comments, armchair psychology from all sides while condemning the same. Stop it. More below the dooblydoo.
His mum is dead. We don't know why she had the guns. He's dead. We don't know why he shot kids. The kids and teachers are dead. None of those people are coming back.
Guns aren't the problem. Our cultural fetishist nature when it comes to them is. Mental illness isn't the problem - and internet diagnosis after the fact is just cheap shitty mental porn. You're not trying to get inside their head or motivations, you are fondling what happened in a culturally approved way. You are looking for a Reason, because the culture itself isn't going to stand up and say, "Hi! I'm your culture, and I'm a serious fucking problem!"
There is a deep personal belief held by some people that everyone loves kids. No, they don't. But we as a culture Believe this Deeply. It's one of the unspoken rules. So when one of these (so pathetic I have to write that as a plural) events happens we go into socially approved modes of shock, all the while devouring every scrap of "news" and "opinion" like it was illicit porn. Because it IS. It's culturally approved wanking about two things we don't like to talk about - guns and death.
Our culture Does love violence and stress and insecurity. We go out of our way to make sure people are constantly feeling under threat through every possible method. Our entertainment is about being under threat, violence, stress and insecurity. There are different forms of it - but pretty much every single "style" of movie, show, etc we produce and consume is using one of those four factors to make it "appealing." Even the comedies with no guns or violence - they are based in insecurities and stress. The best selling games? Play soldier because you are too fat to be one! Snipe those baddies from your comfy chair in your underwear you Dothraki Man Warrior, you! Fantasies based on threats and violence.
Now, I grew up around guns. Lots of them. No gun safes, just rules. I was taught how to shoot and never cared for it too much - too loud. But I know how, and I get why other people like it. I personally do not own a gun simply because I prefer not to have the easy at hand option of being a suicide survivor. That is my choice. I will be going back to a house full of guns.
I will likely be shooting guns at targets, know where they are, how to load them, possibly even be offered a trip to the gun store to get one myself. My parents wouldn't think twice if I said I wanted a gun.
BUT BUT - MENTALLY ILL OMG.
I can still buy guns, ladies and gents. No problems. Because I've never been a felon, or been in a hospital, or had any of the problems that would prevent someone from getting a gun legally. And frankly, taking away my access to guns isn't going to do shit - because I can kill you with a whole lot of other things a lot faster and quieter and more effectively than a gun with a bit of tinkering in my dad's rather ordinary garage. I just have to be motivated to do something like that - and since I was the kid who cried over killing a butterfly to start an insect collection - that's not likely in my case. But a gun is the last tool I need if I want to get ugly.
We need to have an honest conversation about culture - and that's not going to happen. About the lies we tell ourselves. Puritans. The Old West. Pioneers. Duels. Exceptionalism. Isolationist warriors. Peacemakers. Winners. The Best. We lie to ourselves. All the time. Our resolute unwillingness to look at what we really tell each other, our children, the world - and the contradictions that threaten to shatter that illusion all around us - that is the source of these kind of outbursts. Not "he was autistic" "he was schizophrenic" "she was a survivalist" - none of those things CAUSED this to happen.
Our shitty culture caused this to happen. Our pretense that death is an enemy that must be fought and defeated, rather than part of life. Our desire to be entertained by anxieties - anything else is deemed "boring." Our childlike black and white view of the world that puts us in the centre and the rest of the world nonexistent. That every problem only has two possible and diametrically opposite solutions. That reality is personal, mutable, and seeks to be "fair."
Until we are willing to address the lies we live in - we're just going to keep having people who explode and try to take as many other people with them as we can.
WE are the problem. Not guns. Not mental illness.
Cultural illness is the problem - and there are no pills or quick fixes for that.