There's a relatively liberal gun aficionado and writer that I found recently; can't remember his name, but he did a book where he interviewed both sides of the gun debate (both extremists and regular folk) to figure out exactly what's motivating everyone.
On one of his blog posts last year, he brought up the shooting and bombing in Norway. He pointed out how unlike American media, the Norwegian news barely said a thing about his guns or how he got them, despite Norway being a country with much lower gun ownership and more restrictive access.
He thinks the Norwegians have it right: how the guy got his guns or whether he should have had them isn't the point, and it distracts from the real issue. Instead, they focus on determining how someone got to the point where they thought that slaughtering innocent people was a solution to anything in the first place, and how they can keep people from thinking that.
Another of his posts mentioned how divisive gun politics are, and how they keep society from progressing: right-wingers would likely be much more willing to accept a progressive, liberal agenda if they weren't so afraid that Obama was "gunna steal all my shotguns!" and if the left-wingers would stop giving them any reason to be paranoid about a gun grab instead of focusing on real problems in society, like mental health care, education, and the economy.
