Debate about gun laws spikes after mass shootings because their carnage reminds us that guns are uniquely and efficiently deadly, and pitifully under-regulated relative to the risks they pose. Yet gun violence in the United States is also unacceptably mundane, taking one or two lives at a time, all the time, with little fanfare and few headlines — just an ambulance carrying away the corpse of another battered wife, another child, another mentally ill person who felt she had no other option. Some of these deaths would happen even if the nation had sensible gun laws. Many would not. 

The research that exists increasingly shows there are effective measures that reduce gun deaths without materially infringing on law-abiding people’s liberty: deny firearms to domestic abusers, for example; perform serious background checks on would-be gun buyers; require that gun owners obtain a license. Such measures...would make society safer. 

—So, About That ‘Good Guy’ With A Gun 
Washington Post 7/12