A shooting at a Sikh temple in Wisconsin has thus far left 7 dead–including the shooter–and 3 people fighting for their lives in critical condition at a hospital.

Several weeks ago, James Holmes, a 24-year-old man, killed 12 people and left dozens more wounded, after shooting into the audience at a midnight showing of the movie ‘The Dark Rises’.

Since I know that no conversation about gun violence in the U.S. is complete without someone mentioning ‘black-on-black’ crime, I’ll be the first to bring it up: In just one weekend in Chicago, 8 people were killed and 46 others were wounded by bullets.

Not much has been revealed about the shooter and what his intentions were at the Sikh temple.

James Holmes, the shooter in Aurora, Colorado, had 4 weapons--3 on his person–when he was arrested by police: an AR-15 assault weapon, a Remington 870 shotgun and a 40 caliber glock handgun–the fourth weapon, a second 40 caliber glock, was found in Holmes’ car outside the movie theater. All of the guns Holmes used were purchased legally; he had no previous criminal record. Eventually it came to light that James Holmes had been seeing a psychiatrist–a woman who was so alarmed by Holmes’ words and/or behavior that she notified a “behavioral evaluation and threat assessment” team to say Holmes could potentially be a danger to others. The behavioral evaluation team never took any action to notify police that there was a real and serious threat of Holmes committing a violent act.

And, well, what can you say about violence in Chicago and other urban centers that hasn’t been said before?

One suggestion at reducing gun violence has been to disallow those with a history of psychiatric problems from being able to purchase weapons. But this suggestion has flaws. First of all, there would have to be a national database that contains the medical histories of all those who had ever had any mental problems. Would people be willing to have their medical histories uploaded to a national database that all gun sellers could access? And if psychiatric evaluations will be part of a national database, then what about all other medical information–such as who has had an abortion or cosmetic surgery? Americans value their privacy, thus a national file-cabinet overflowing with privileged medical information is unlikely.

There are other problems with trying to keep guns out of the hands of people who are likely to go crazy and kill random people: What mental disorders would require one being placed on the “no gun” list? What would be the process for one to get off the list, after the psychiatric problem had been resolved?

One suggestion that has been made to curb violence of the type of mass-murder-type-shooting committed by James Holmes is to only allow people to purchase certain amounts of ammunition within a specified time frame. Another proposal is to ban the purchase of assault and assault-style weapons, such as the AR-15 used by Holmes. Former President Bill Clinton signed The Federal Assault Weapons Ban, a law which disallowed the manufacture of semi-automatic weapons for civilian usage, in 1994; that ban expired on September 13, 2004 and no attempt to renew it has succeeded.

Perhaps the highest hurdle preventing the reduction of gun violence is the fact there is no one way criminals are able to acquire guns. Research by the Department of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF), reported in Chicago Mag, indicates that there are numerous avenues–rather than one loophole to be closed–by which people who seek to commit gun violence can easily obtain a weapon.

Besides making it illegal to purchase a gun–because the NRA and millions of other Americans will not allow for that to happen–what do you think can be done to curb gun violence in the United States?