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Determinism is a helluva drug...
But seriously, we gotta look at the structural issues at play in things like this. A lot of gun control advocates want to point at things like this, and say, see, this shit doesn't happen in any other country in the world, obviously the guns are the problem, we need to take the guns! But when you look at other countries, you see that the US is one of the few that has both guns and almost no social safety nets. The proposed solution on the left is never "fix the problems that lead to crime and violence"; rather, it's "take the tools used to commit crime and violence"
You can use the facile response of saying, no, this is all on Cruz, he made a choice. And it's true, kind of, except that his choices were significantly constrained by the social conditions that were imposed on him. That's not saying that what he did was right, nor does it make it the 'fault' of the people he victimized. But things like this simply do not happen in a vacuum.
Here's another way of looking at it.
If you take a dog as a puppy, starve it, leave it outside all the time, ignore it, kick it, never give it any positive interaction, and always punish it for any 'infraction' when you've never put in any time to teach it better, are you going to be surprised when it mauls someone? Why do you expect any other animal to behave better than a dog just because it walks upright and has no fur?
The proposed solution on the left is never "fix the problems that lead to crime and violence"; rather, it's "take the tools used to commit crime and violence"
What left are you talking about? Social issues and solving them is generally by definition leftist. If one suggests it they get called socialist/communist in the US even if they're closer to center if compared to rest of the world.
We also discuss the issue of tons of crime being caused by poverty and lack of social nets, especially when discussing police brutality and the like. Now many of the members of congress people consider/accuse of being leftists are really just centrists, or close to it, or people who want to maintain their power, get votes, not really change the status quo. I'd say they match your definition, but if you're saying leftists don't want social solutions then you either haven't been talking to leftists, or you aren't fully listening.
As I said in response to someone else: what passes for the left says that they want this, until the rubber meets the road. Criminal justice reform/defund the police? That's great, until you have a lot of homeless people scaring the Good, Decent, Upstanding citizens. High-density, affordable housing? Oh no, not in my charming, turn-of-the-century neighborhood, that would ruin it's charm and wreck my property values! MLK Jr. said that the white liberals were the enemy, and--as a white leftist--he was right!
Republicans are honest; they want to fuck everyone over as long as they make a buck, or believe that they're doing their god's will.
Personally, I side with the anarchists that are at least trying to work within their communities to make shit better in whatever small ways they can.
I actually question what left you're talking about lol. Outside the internet, the American left does NOT talk safety nets unless they're one of the furthest left voices. Leftists are a very small minority in the US.
Bad faith argument. The Left is very much pro-social safety nets and pro-mental health supports. It's kind of our whole fucking thing aside from worker's having ownership of their labor.
The issue is not enough Americans understand the basic function of government, let alone how new policy becomes law, let alone how fucked they're getting by their government and not having the werewithall to understand that they've had their social safety nets eroded consistently by Republican politicians since the Nixon era or earlier. So the only answer that seems to stick in the minds of anyone is 'libruls wanna take my guns away!" well, yeah, take the guns away of the known criminals and known mental cases because we're not making much headway on the "improving social safety nets" part of the plan.
No, the left says that it's in favor of this shit. It never does that, even when they have total control over a state. (Specifically, what passes for the left in the US; I can't really speak for what the left is doing elsewhere in the world.) Look at California, where Dems have a supermajority; the things that they say they want, like affordable housing for everyone, walkable, high-density cities, good public transit, public education that works, police/criminal justice reform, etc., aren't getting done because everyone gets all NIMBY when it's near them, and people are losing their goddamn minds over homeless people just existing.
OTOH, they're more than fine with taking away the right to keep and bear arms.
At least Republicans are completely up-front about being awful shitbags.
Just because the right likes to screech about how your centrists are extreme leftitists doesn't change the fact they aren't leftists. It's just a smokescreen for the rightwing to cover just how extreme they've become.
You can call them whatever you want, but Dems are what passes for the left in the US.
If you're going to move the goalposts and say that Dems aren't the left, then you also can't rationally say that the left is doing anything at all, since the left in the US has never had any real power then.
What is agreeable for social safety net(s) from the perspective of conservatives?
Single payer healthcare? Universal Basic Income? More expansive food subsidies? More expansive housing subsidies?
What is not considered "government hand out" that we can all agree on?
Personally, IDGAF what social/fiscal regressives are okay with. We've been doing this shitty form of capitalism too long where we put profits ahead of people, and that needs to be ended.