In complete agreement with you. I do believe in gun control, even though I'm a gun owner myself, because many shootings would be prevented not just through stricter checks, but through how prohibitively expensive firearms would become in unofficial markets (to teenagers and such). Certainly gun control doesn't evaporate existing guns, but it would go a long way toward gradually reducing future problems. That said, I think you hit the nail on the head, that simply removing guns from the equation is not ultimately getting to the root of the problem. It might do a lot to prevent some of these, but the impulses arising in people that cause them to begin with will remain, and will continue to be allowed to grow unchecked, resulting in God only knows what other kind of behavioral weirdness.
America is sick, in so many ways. Physically, mentally, emotionally ... and a growing number of people here see it and don't understand why we aren't doing things to change all these systems which obviously do not work, or that actively cause harm. And it does create a huge and painful sore in people when you tell them that they're the best, they live in the greatest land in the world, that they can do anything, and then they spend their lives suffering setbacks and disappointment, or finding themselves mentally or emotionally beaten down by so much of what they encounter on the road to "success".