We are ignorant about what we talk about. More than 70% of mass shootings are done by unknown. Leaps to stereotypes for guidance on legislation and law enforcement policy are mostly built on existing prejudice.

We tend to conflate many problems into single ones. We do this because we suppose it reduced things to a manageable single problem, but we tend to be ignorant and careless about how that muddies and co-mingles rather than clarifies extracts specific actionable contexts, which is to say we prefer general unworkable solutions that provide broad answer to specific responses with very narrow value. When I say 'we' I mean the us that is usually uneducated with any aspect of the problem needing to be fixed, but has a strong opinion based on existing our existing prejudice.

And the "Must do something!" crowd in government are likely to go with responses built on existing prejudice...because legislators are just as likely as We the common citizens to completely ignore evidence in order to bask in a "we did something good' glow of having acted on widely shared, but broadly un-useful, if not flat wrong headed, values.