i watched a lot of the media attention on this yesterday: checked the news every hour for udpates, watched the usually deplorable nightly news program just to catch the updates. cant tell you why, other than a fascination with death, much the same as the media addiction that followed 9/11.
anyway, watching all that news showed that, repeatedly the news outlets were covering this because people wanted information, but there was no new or extremely limited info to cover. so, they have to find an angle.
and, in this day and age, that angle turns to politics and gun control. i think at Columbine, the gun control issue took a back seat to the music/video game control issue, but i think that was because of something the killers had said/wrote (?).
so, i dont want to say that gun control, as an issue, is only made up by the media to fulfill space on a popular story, but on the other hand.... i dont think it matters in this case.
as a side note, to go along with this "story" one news agnecy ran an interview with some lady in texas who, while sitting at a cafe had her parents gunned down while her gun sat in her car because of texas' "unfair" gun law disallowing carrying concealed weapons. so, she began her mission to change this law, and succeeded with George W Bush signing a new law as governor of Texas that allows concealed weapons.
arent there a whole host of other issues to look at here? especially a society that alienates people to such a degree that their only outlet seems, to them, to be going out in a hail of gunfire? maybe thats just too abstract though.....