I think that there are too many factors in this case to go into much detail on all of them in a TTG post, but I want to try to unpack some of these issues.

The idea that this has nothing to do with religion is, to me, absurd.

The Quran does not have to be taken out of context to justify this kind of behavior. Anyone can pick up the Quran, thumb through it and see that these crimes are called for by Allah - and in some cases - committed by Muhammad.

This is a point of contention, however, for liberal defenders of Islam. They will say that any intelligent person with a degree in Islamic theology can see that in context those verses do not call for what a surface reading might suggest. That may very well be a valid point. But I think that those people need to consider that the majority of the 1.4 billion Muslims on this planet are not learned scholars of Islam.
While most of them hold the peaceful messages in the Quran in a higher regard than the violent messages, there are still vast numbers who do not. This must be conceded in order for the conversation to progress and it rarely is.

Now it is understandable that some people might read what I have just said and think that I am saying that the majority of Muslims are violent people. This is not true.
Keep in mind that even if it was the '1% of all Muslims who are jihadists" as pro-Islam liberals would have you believe, that is still 15 million people.
A quick look at some of the polling data from majority Muslim countries paints a very different picture.

83% of Egyptians approve of attacks on American troops.
26% of Indonesians approve of attacks on American troops.
26% of Pakistanis approve of attacks on American troops.
68% of Moroccans approve of attacks on American troops.
90% of Palestinians approve of attacks on American troops.
72% of Jordanians approve of attacks on American troops.
52% of Turks approve of some or most groups that attack Americans (39% oppose)
A minority of Muslims disagreed entirely with terror attacks on American troops.
About half of those opposed to attacking Americans were sympathetic with al-Qaedas attitude toward the U.S.
[ Register or Signin to view external links. ]

Granted, these are not Jihadists, they would be defined as Islamists. Muslims who approve of terrorist acts, but would never commit one themselves.
They would rather work within the political system to achieve their goals.
When speaking about Islamic reform, these are the people getting in the way. These are the people whose minds we need to change, otherwise the Jihadists are not only going to have ideological basis for the actions, they will have both financial and militaristic support.

Another thing that people like to say in opposition to the idea that the religion is to blame for the acts of ISIS, and other Islamic terrorist groups, is that much of the religious wars in the world are geo-politically motivated and that the text is distorted to influence ill-educated and gullible people into fighting for those political gains. This is partly true.
Poverty does cause a turn towards extremist ideologies, this was no more clearly seen than in post world war 1 Germany.
But that does not explain how someone with a university level education, living in a nice house in the US with a family can become interested in Islam, read the Quran, convert, and then move to Syria to join ISIS, and this has happened.

There needs to be a reformation of sorts within the Muslim world.
The voices of change need to be Muslim voices, and while this will not be an instant change the only way to fight a war of ideas is to change your opponents ideas..

Gun control cannot be ruled out as a factor at least worth discussing.

A distinction should be made here between gun violence as a result of gang warfare, which accounts for the majority of gun crime in the US, and gun violence as a result of a mentally unstable individual deciding to shoot up a school, or a night club.

Obviously an argument could be made that gang members and criminals are mentally unstable, but for the purpose of a simple distinction - that particular point is being overlooked here.
I have given my opinion on this website before about how to reduce the rate of gun crime in the US overall with a focus on gang crime and drug legalization, but that is a non-issue in this context so I will not be bringing it up.

Getting a gun in the US should be as difficult as getting a license to fly an aircraft.
In terms of training, mental health checks, and criminal background checks, it should be one of the most difficult things a person can do..

This man was bi-polar, he beat his wife, he talked to his co-workers about killing people, was investigated twice by the FBI, had ties to a terrorist who ended up being an ISIS suicide bomber, his father had a youtube show in which he basically pledged allegiance to the Taliban, and yet he was still able to buy his weapons two weeks before he decided to pledge his life to ISIS and go on a killing spree.

There is an obvious need for stricter gun policies. Stricter does not mean a ban. It just means stricter.
If you are a mentally competent American without a criminal record who is willing to put in the training in order to get a gun then you should have no problems with this idea.

As for mental health treatment in the US, there is no doubt that not only treatment should be improved - this comes down to free healthcare, freeing up money for innovation - but education about mental health should also be improved.

A side thought

Hopefully to quell some of the boredom you might be feeling reading this, I want to talk about something that not a lot of people seem to have realized, or something which might make you think about how you would react in a situation where a shooter has entered your school or your place of work, and who knows, if this idea gets momentum it might end up saving some lives.

Since 9/11, everyone now knows that if a man stands up on your plane and says "Everybody stay calm, I'm just going to take control of the plane, you're all going to be fine." this man must be incapacitated immediately. There is no doubt in anyone's mind that this man intends to kill everyone on board the flight.
So if the nearest ten people to this man jump on him he is not going to be able to carry out his plan. Even if he has a gun and is a trained ex-delta force operative, he will be able to kill one or two people before he simply cannot do any more damage.
And these one or two people will rightly be hailed as heroes because they will have saved the lives of everyone on board.

For some reason this animal instinct which has now been hardwired into us has not translated into the situation of a school shooter, or a nightclub shooter.
If you can run, that's fine, run. Nobody is going to blame you, but if you cannot run - if you are in a classroom and the windows are locked and he is standing in the door way, you might as well be in an airplane.

Imagine how differently this night club shooting would have unfolded if, as he walked in the door shooting, the nearest 10 or 20 people who had not yet been killed simply charged at him. He might have killed 5 people at the most. A far cry away from the 50 we are seeing.

Many hid in the toilets throughout the hostage situation. One boy was texting his mother throughout the ordeal, stating that he was in the toilets with many other people and that the shooter was in there with them.
How many lives could have been saved if everyone in that toilet had jumped on him at the same time?

When you are in a situation like that other animal instincts take over and many people will instinctively flee, but this hopeful idea that you will be able to get away is simply not possible on a plane, and it is not possible in a night club bathroom where the shooter is standing in the door way.
The difference is that only in one of these situations will people find the courage to be heroes and tackle the shooter.
This is a fatal flaw in our psyche, in my opinion.
I am not saying that I would decide to be the hero in that situation, nobody can say that they would for certain, but it is a shame that we can't and I am wondering how many more shootings like this it will take for people to realize the situation they are in when something like this happens. Fight or flight clearly has a wrong choice in these kinds of situations and everything which can be done should be done to remove this flaw in our thinking.

This was a tragedy and the outcry of anger has been completely understandable. But we can not let our anger dismantle any hope of a rational discussion about the causes of this act or how to remove the chance of those things causing another attack of this kind.

TL:DR

- The doctrine of Islam is to blame and a reformation is needed within the Muslim community to rectify this.
- Guns should be a lot harder to acquire but not banned or outlawed, and mental health should be a much more openly discussed issue in the US education and healthcare systems.
- A paradigm shift in our psyche is needed in situations like this, people should rely more on the fight response, as opposed to the flight response.