You know what?! I think you are on to something. They need a person to represent their enemy. Someone to be that strawman. This gives them the surreal idea that they can shoot and kill that enemy. Somehow that is the only way they can make their "common sense" make sense. If problems are too big or complex, they can't rationalize it. Blaming everything they consider bad on a person is a perfect solution.
That already happens with Satan. Unfortunately, some enterprising evangelists have convinced their congregation that he is not only real, but infecting people the pastor doesn't like.
Strange. They can't actually find this Satan so they have to find real people to blame. It's almost as if they have unfounded beliefs. More scapegoats and strawmen to point at and project on so they don't have to process reality.
I swear there will come a day when a mass gun nut uprising actually happens, and in that moment the gun rights debate will die a fiery death, because in a civil war scenario rigged explosive drones will be far more effective at holding off the inevitable crushing under federal boots than trying to shoot the people who have better guns and also hold home field advantage and also their kids aren't actively ratting out their positions because they despise everything they stand for.
If thousands of dead school children isn't enough, a few thousand dead ammosexuals certainly won't be.
These are people who cannot accept the reality that their guns make them less safe. They each think themselves the exception to the sets of statistics that have no exceptions.
There hasn't even be 1k kids killed in school shootings, but this isn't surprising that you don't know this, as it's fed to everyone like kids are killed at school every 5 seconds in the USA.