There is nearly one legal gun in the US for every resident of the country. With so many firearms in the hands of citizens, many believe public safety in the US is already seriously compromised.
And when there is a mass shooting it only opens up a cultural divide between the gun owners and people who want stronger gun control.
On October 1, a 26-year-old student shot nine people and then himself at Umpqua Community College in Roseburg, Oregon.
The day before that, a 16-year-old student in South Dakota shot his school principal in the arm.
Eight days later, a student was shot dead and three wounded at an Arizona university, hours before another college student was killed in Houston, Texas. It was the Texas campus’ second shooting in a week.
“This has become routine,” US President Barack Obama pointed out after the Roseburg shooting.
In a country where gun violence is commonplace, school shootings no longer shock.
People have been shot at US schools 29 times in 2015 to date, according to a tally kept by Everytown, an anti-gun violence group. Government data show about 88 people are shot dead in the US every day.
The US Constitution protects the right to bear arms, and although laws vary by state, guns are relatively easy to acquire. There are 310mn legal guns in the US - nearly one for every resident.
But the numbers belie the fact that gun owners are in fact a minority. Research studies show two-thirds of Americans do not own guns, and nearly half want stricter gun laws.
“The folks who are very pro-gun are very vocal, and it makes the rest of the country look like we’re a bunch of gun-toting cowboys. We are not,” says Robin Hattersley, executive editor of Campus Safety, a magazine covering strategies for preventing school violence.
But both sides are at risk in what the American College of Physicians calls an “epidemic” of gun violence that has lasted for decades.
“You’re never going to stop every threat,” said Mike Dorn, executive director of Safe Havens International, a non-profit school safety consulting group.
Finding solutions is complicated by a cultural rift over one of the country’s most divisive topics.
Since 1997, the US Congress has barred the country’s public health authority, the Centre for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), from conducting research into the causes of - and solutions to - gun violence.
The move came after CDC-funded studies linking gun ownership to increased homicide rates prompted complaints from the National Rifle Association, a powerful gun rights group.