EEF -- I was reading my last reply and wondered... is the original question too broad or is the premise of it wrong?
You're asking for "gun" violence prevention solutions. I responded that violence is not a hardware issue but is a software issue, so I am not really answering your question.
Could you narrow down the question a bit? Do you just want a brainstorm of ideas specific to prevention of (1) violence/homicides involving firearms, or are you looking for (2) prevention of mass shootings?
Ideally we would find solutions for both general gun violence as well as mass killing type incidents because both are used as reasons to further restrict firearms.
Stopping it when it starts to me is the easy question. Meet violence with violence and end it as quickly as possible. Unfortunately the problem with only focusing on that is that people already have died at that point usually. We save some lives, but not as many as if we can prevent it altogether.
I frequently point out that 90 people died when a guy used a truck as a weapon to illustrate that restricting them to less deadly firearms won't make a significant difference, in my opinion. I could easily imagine a number of scenarios where an individual could manage a large body count with deaths much more gruesome than a school shooting. I never say what they are because I don't want to give any ideas but it is only a matter of time before one crazy person bent on murder comes up with it himself.
So I really want to focus on prevention and when it comes to the gun control debate prevention is what the left is focusing on as well so that is where I think cooperation can happen and we can temper their more extreme objectives.
Does that narrow it down? I want to brainstorm on the harder issue of how do we prevent or reduce the number of these events from occurring.
The NRA spokeswoman at the CNN town hall has called for mandatory reporting to the NCIC system. I support this gun control measure because an ineffective background check doesn't do a lot of good. That wouldn't catch all people but it would catch some. Overcoming medical privacy laws was one suggestion but I am very hesitant to see how that could be done without serious potential for abuse. I am open to ideas though.