Yeah, I'm angry at the shooter, of course. But the shooter knew what he was doing, and turned himself in voluntarily. The punishment doesn't phase him. Anger at him seems- impotent. Hence the search for other things that we could have done to prevent or at least mitigate this kind of thing, hence the turn to guns.
The fact of the matter is, the assault weapon (AR-15) the guy used would have been covered under the AWB of 2004. Whether, without this weapon, casualties would have almost certainly been less than the 40. The AR-15 is a very powerful weapon, the civilian equivalent of the M-16. It was by far the most powerful thing in his arsenal.
On the other hand, he could have gotten an analogous weapon with equal ease if the AWB still existed, because it didn't actually do anything of nontrivial effect. The AWB is probably the best evidence that gun control advocates don't actually know what they're doing.
