Help me out here. Are the kids that die in school shootings not being "punished" too? Are you being punished because you are deprived of your "right" to drive your car on the left side of the road at 100mph? Maybe you have a perfect driving record and are capable of doing so safely.
We live in a complex society with millions of other people, many of whom are not exactly like us. That means there have to be some rules. Some of those rules are going to seem ridiculous and many of them are going to clearly suck. However, they likely suck much less than the alternatives.
Also, don't go around blaming people who just want to go peacefully about their business without being maimed or murdered. If you want to blame anyone, either blame fruitcakes who go off and murder a bunch of people or idiot politicians who think they can solve this problem with thoughts and prayers. Or people who make cop-outs about "mental health" but would scream bloody murder if we actually allocated (or even could allocate) adequate resources to address that obvious problem.
I own multiple firearms. I have done so since I was approximately twelve. Largely I use them to shoot beer cans, but only in self defense. However, I find all of the arguments that firearms advocates use for their retention to be at best questionable and in many cases ridiculous.
Operating a firearm safely and effectively is a learned and highly perishable skill. Which means you need continuous practice to keep the skill. Doing so in a kill-or-be-killed situation is an even more difficult and more perishable skill, as your own reflexes are working against you. Again you need continuous practice to maintain that skill. Very few civilians (and bluntly not enough police officers and people serving in the military) get the hours of training time needed to acquire and maintain those skills. At the same time most civilian firearm owners have a ridiculous degree of confidence that they could handle themselves effectively in a gunfight. Having a firearm in your home for self-defense without having those skills makes you a danger to yourself and others, but not necessarily the invading Venezuelan militia or the psycho killer in your kitchen.
I'd also add that it is pretty well-documented that a pretty substantial percentage of soldiers serving in WWII were just unwilling or unable to shoot at people, even in a life or death situation. You won't really know until you really are in one of those situations if you can shoot a person, even in self-defense.
Now you're getting deep into philosophy (among other things).
The situations behind the people who get murdered are what we have to focus on; otherwise we're treating symptoms instead of the illness. I see two roots to the problem.
One root cause is mental illness. There are more issues and situations nowadays because many (most?) states no longer have the treatment facilities they once supported. Instead, arrested individuals who need treatment wind up incarcerated instead of in a place that specializes in treatment. (But we still might ask: why is there a surge in mental illness these days?)
The other (deeper) root cause is spiritual. People who think there is no deity watching their actions, and who think there are no eternal consequences, are far more likely to steal, kill, destroy property, etc. People who do not believe there is a God who loves them but who also expects high moral standards are more prone to be self-centered, self-serving, and uncaring about the needs, wants, and rights of other people. After all, if all we get afterward is the same dirt nap as everyone else, why not swipe that check out of your neighbor's mailbox or shoot the guy who cut you off in traffic, as long as you think you can get away with it? Or maybe you hate yourself and your life so much, you don't even care if you live or die, so why not go out in a "blaze of glory?" Contrast this with folks who believe that they are expected to love God, and love one another as much as they love themselves, and that an eternal penalty awaits those who refuse? We are seeing the societal results of a far lower number of changed hearts and lives.
In the 1950s plenty of people went to bed with their doors unlocked. Neighbors looked out for neighbors. Kids took their guns with them to school so they could go hunting before or after, and there was no "mass shooting" problem. Schoolteachers led the students in prayer every morning and taught the kids Biblical moral values (you know the ones... the values our founders had). Students behaved in class and applied themselves to their lessons with a minimum of cheating. Parents backed all of this up, and gladly.
But starting in the 1960s a series of legal decisions changed all that.
Now we have seen the kids of the '60s grow up and have kids of the '80s, who had kids of the 2000s, all of whom grew up in a different school environment. And this school environment inevitably trickled down into the home environment. Now it is against the law to teach kids in school the real reasons why they should obey their parents, respect teachers and elders, and avoid cheating. Now we lock our doors, bar the windows, and peer out nervously at the miscreants on the sidewalk while hoping they don't take a notion to break in. Kids are more far unruly and disobedient at home. Their parents were raised to not believe in absolute moral standards, so the kids don't believe in them either. It's 'dog eat dog,' everyone for himself, and let the foolish nice guys get the hindmost. I hear from school personnel that even the parents now come into the building exhibiting behavior issues! (Some example they are setting for their children!) Violent video games and movies, along with easily accessible porn which debases the female human being, have contributed to an unconsciously held belief in today's young adults and youths that other people exist on this planet to give them pleasure and to take advantage of.
Should we be surprised at the uptick in mass shootings? Should we be surprised by rampant corruption in government? Should we be surprised by corporate greed? These are the
logical outgrowths of excluding from our society the basic moral tenets which glue a society together.
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