Bewolf, as you know I come from Italy and I can assure you that the nature of crime there is incredibly varied.
I can guarantee you that in modern western society nobody is forced to be a criminal, it's ALL about will. Crime is strongly bonded to the good ol' equation "I can't afford something but I want it = I'll steal it". It's probably driven by class envy or pure greediness. In a way I feel like the minor criminals are driven by "good reasons" but apply the wrong method, whilst the corporate criminals are pure evil greedy monsters with no sense of the future and no respect for their equals. There are many levels as I said, but you CHOOSE to become a dishonest person.
As per your point on guns being fuel for the fire, I don't think it's always the case: it's a society that deems acceptable to play video games that promote murder and gore, or films that make murder part of their normal routine that cause an overall "numbing" towards the whole concept of violence. We love our action movies and cheer when stuff gets blown up, but we kinda forget that on a subconscious level we are making them a form of entertainment and we're not as shocked when we deal with them in real life.
Back in the day real violence was used as a form of entertainment, nowadays we use fake violence, but it works on the same level: a person with mental issues will absorb and assimilate that to a level where it's hard to distinct between reality and fiction, so even the most atrocious crime (like the one in Aurora) might be somehow justified because of the altered state in which the person lives.
And again it doesn't need a gun to be devastating: the guy could have thrown grenades in that cinema and killed and maimed way more people. The Oklahoma bomber didn't use guns for his terrorist attack either, did he?
The problem is not guns, the problem is the society we live in, and how we numbing ourselves in front of real pain and suffer.
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