Talk politics.

All right, this one was a shooter. But say, a terrorist does what most terrorists do these days, namely pushes a button and his suicide vest goes kaboom. Now tell me how any good law-abiding citizen with a gun would stop such a guy in a non-gun-restricted area.

You're carrying a gun in a bar. Abdul over there across the aisle is having a kebab. At some point, unnoticed, he reaches under his shirt, says a silent prayer, then pushes a button. Next thing you know, you're in Heaven (being the pious God-fearing law-abiding citizen that you certainly are). What good is your gun? Did it save your ass and a few dozen other asses?

"Looks like the bar was in a gun-free zone, hence that high number of victims."

Armed security present were unable to stop this attack. Similar attacks where armed customers were present have sometimes has had high body counts because the "good guys with guns" recognized that they couldn't fire back without endangering those around them. There have been some situations where "good guys with guns" have fired back in a shooter situation - and made things worse. I'd wager that a dark nightclub with flashing nights and loud music is not the ideal environment for successfully hitting one's target.

"Looks like the offender has a history of threatening to kill folks, google for "Gilroy" and "G4S". But nobody did anything because of being afraid of getting a backlash from the liberal media."

Citation needed that "nobody did anything because of being afraid of getting a backlash." Suggestions welcome for how we can square the contradictory positions of "everyone is innocent until proven guilty" and "the police should have had magic time-travel foresight and arrested this guy before he committed any crimes."

"And of course the main problem is Islam, not guns. Compare to French attacks where guns are restricted, but still, somehow, criminals and terrorists are armed no problem."

Suggestions welcome for how we deal with lone-wolf terrorists who are not in direct contact with any terrorist groups (therefore, no intelligence is available) but who decide to go out and perform an attack on their own. Bonus points for explaining how a lone wolf Muslim unaffiliated with any actual terrorist group who shoots up a nightclub makes Islam "the main problem" but a lone wolf Christian unaffiliated with any actual terrorist group who shoots up Planned Parenthood doesn't make Christianity "the main problem."

Extra credit for squaring how we can deal with this supposed "main problem" without violating essential freedoms and guarantees. Extra-extra credit for explaining how this is not serving the very interests of groups like ISIS who benefit greatly from the "Islam is the enemy" narrative.

"an absolutely neutered president's speech"

Neutered would imply doing nothing. A more accurate assessment would be that the President disagrees with you on what the problem actually is, and what the solutions to that problem might be.

Of the 15,000 or so murders per year, a few dozen are incidents like this, the other 99.something% are from people shooting someone, usually someone they know, for what is usually a stupid reason. While they don't make the news like a terrorist attack, they do a lot more damage as a whole. Having more people armed while drinking alcohol in a public place sounds like a great way to cut down on the dozens of people who are killed in these kind of terrorist attacks while increasing the thousands who are killed by armed people being stupid.

While we pretend that this is about Islam, here is the thing. Mass shootings are a largely American phenomenon. In fact, Americans own more guns than citizens of any other country (http://wtkr.com/2016/06/14/us-home-to-nearly-a-third-of-worlds-mass-shootings/).

Food for thought. In case anyone is hungry.

the main problem is Islam, not guns

If you eliminate all killings by all muslims in the USA, it doesn't make a significant change in the gun homicide numbers.

Well, koomba-ya is nice and all, and yet the possible ways of preventing such tragedies in the future is what matters the most here.

Islam does have a problem, and it deserves to be called out. The problem is that there's a contingent who can't stop there, who want to say: "All Muslims are the problem" and declare war on 1.2 billion people. There's a real danger there. ISIS's greatest enemy is other Muslims, the surrounding legitimate governments. Because of this they want us to buy into this narrative where Islam is the enemy. These war-mongerers who scream that all Muslims are a threat, that we are "at war with Islam" don't realize (or perhaps simply don't care) that they are doing what ISIS wants, dancing to their tune. ISIS wants us to fight their enemies for them, and too many of us are stupidly willing to do that. If they had a bit of self-awareness, they'd be ashamed to be, in effect, taking orders from ISIS.

We all get that, but the problem is that our politics are so oppositional. The above problem mostly comes from the right, so on the left instead of saying: "No, that's too far, let's fight radical Islamism, not all of Islam," you get people who can't even concede that Islam does anything wrong, ever. I get it, of course. People will talk about the "religion of peace" because it's in the environment where Muslim Americans are still being discriminated against or attacked because of some assholes who had nothing to do with them except for sharing a faith. But it does get taken too far sometimes. I'd argue that it's a fringe, honestly, but I'll admit that they have a big voice. It also does show that we on the left are just as able to forego facts and reality in favor of knee-jerk partisan fighting. Cognitive bias and logical fallacies are not the sole property of the right. ;)

I'm (kind of) glad the debate at least hasn't devolved into pro and anti-Muslim, and has remained pro and anti-gun, thus far.

Yeah, that's right, in case the shooter was psychologically normal - which most shooters aren't (almost by definition). If a shooter goes on a rampage, chances are, they are mentally unhinged, or are sold to some mind-numbing cult or suicidal ideology. Which means they don't care about self-preservation and all that jazz.

If you're an ordinary guy who cares about their own preservation, you wouldn't start shooting at a crowd in the first place.