and I wore my six-gun holster with cap pistol every chance I got for a year or two during kindergarten & first grade.
After that I played army very often, complete with plastic rifle and helmet. I adored making vocal war noises of screaming bombers, tanks, and bombs. I even owned a G.I. Joe doll, as embarrassing as that is to admit.
In my "tween" years, I owned a BB gun and enjoyed target practice.
Years later, when I was deemed mature enough, I went turkey and deer hunting with my father and grandfather, and owned a very nice Browning shotgun. I don't hunt any more, but I don't condemn those who do so responsibly.
Never once have I turned a firearm on another human being. Never once have I been tempted to gun down students, co-workers, movie-goers, concert-goers, drivers, shoppers, holiday revelers, or any other category of human.
So, while I understand your point about American gun worship, I don't think that explains today's massacre, or others before it. I think it's time we faced the fact that in our country there is a toxic mix of not only easy availability of firearms, but also an alienation and devaluing of human life that eats at our collective soul like a cancer.
The perennially posted Onion article lays the question out for us. What is different about us among First World countries? We'd better start trying to change that.
Gun homicides in Spain are about as common as deaths from excessive natural heat in the United States.
Gun homicides in Iceland are about as common as deaths from electrocution in the United States.
In Germany, being murdered with a gun is as uncommon as being killed by a falling object in the United States.
and so on...
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