Fundamentally, you can&#x27;t read people&#x27;s minds, so you can&#x27;t use surveillance to stop individual actions.<p>A single motivated individual could likely have pulled off the worst of these (the theater shootings).<p>The barrier of entry is low: any of [peculiar mental configuration], [willingness to die], [overwhelming frustration or disenfranchisement with society] or [extreme anger] plus access to a firearm (or some chemicals, a machine shop and time... even access to a vehicle might be enough).<p>Given that many statistics indicate that mental health is deteriorating globally across the developed world (not just due to aging population or drugs, either, but due to fundamental structure-of-society issues), Donald Trump&#x27;s &quot;this would have been different if there were more weapons on people&quot; takes the cake as the most idiotic response.<p>We can&#x27;t stop these things, we can only make them universally reviled, and that&#x27;s already the case.<p>What I find interesting is the response of leaders: France has said it will ignore EU rules, increase its prison and military budget, and refuse to drop the latter for another 5 years citing &#x27;national security&#x27; (following the destructive and viral American model obviating respect for treaties, as China and others now do). Simultaneously, it redoubles bombing of already suffering Syrian targets, presumably on suddenly fortuitously acquired intelligence. One of tens of remote wars since the mid 20th century in which vastly powerful western militaries permanently shatter the fabric of societies half-way around the world, deploying nationalist rhetoric that wouldn&#x27;t have been astray in Rome, and often leaving power vacuums that cause chaos for decades or longer, one is forced to ask the question: who are the real terrorists? Read some Chomsky.<p>“The Americans came,” he said. “They took away Saddam, but they also took away our security. I didn’t like Saddam, we were starving then, but at least we didn’t have war. When you came here, the civil war started.” <a href="http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thenation.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;what-i-discovered-from-interviewing-isis-prisoners&#x2F;" rel="nofollow">http:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.thenation.com&#x2F;article&#x2F;what-i-discovered-from-inte...</a>