My thesis is that these stories are gripping for people. They truly are, I saw people reposting the monterey park vigil on their social media around the country. This of course makes for good TV, and fills the room at the expense of covering other perhaps more directly relevant concerns that people should be up in arms about (such as corruption and abuse of office, climate change, and our inability to seriously address either due to how these things are connected). And of course when you have one side of the aisle wanting one thing and the other wanting the direct opposite, people will be emboldened to argue various ways in person and online about these issues, and perpetuate even more interest into looking at related media.

But I can't leave the other half of your point hanging either. The guy who stopped the monterey park shooter was unarmed. Honestly though, the whole 'good guy with a gun' narrative is rooted in fantasy. Over the past 20 years of mass shootings in this country, a good guy with a gun has stopped a bad guy with a gun 3% of times. It's also happened before where in the chaos and confusion, that good guy ends up shot by police.

https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/06/22/us/shootings-...

But in either case, the odds of one of being a victim in a mass shooting with a shooter you don't personally know are so low. In terms of gun deaths, you are far more likely to die via suicide or from someone you intimately know (1). Of the deaths via murder, both in terms of mass shootings where 4 people are killed at once (making up 1% of gun deaths a year), and in general, a little over half of all homicides are from intimate partner violence (2,3). So if you think "well a good guy with a gun only stopped a bad guy with a gun so few times because not every good guy has a gun," think again and consider how many more deaths from both suicide or intimate partner violence there would be with more access to guns among the population, along with the police shooting the good guy. Even with the current amount of guns there are in circulation, its estimated that 380,000 are stolen a year (4), and with more ownership that number is sure to increase. That same source also suggests you are 3x more likely to have a gun stolen while carrying.

1. https://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2022/02/03/what-the-da...

2. https://www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/66/wr/mm6628a1.htm

3. https://injepijournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40...

4. https://injepijournal.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s40...