What it took to commit the latest atrocity melds hatred with unfettered access to guns.

On May 23, 22-year-old Elliot Rodger stabbed three men to death in his apartment and then went on a shooting spree that killed three more people, injured 13 and ended with his suicide. Before leaving a trail of grief across Isla Vista, Calif., Rodger went to great lengths to create a digital record of his rage, most of which was directed at women, who he believed had sexually rejected him. We now know about Rodger’s troubled psychiatric history and his parents’ repeated efforts to get him help, including a phone call that his mother made to the police last month to inform them of a disturbing video that suggested, at the very least, that Rodger might be a danger to himself.

In this latest tragedy, there is something or someone for everyone to blame. Armchair psychologists have diagnosed Rodger with mistreated autism, pathological narcissism, depression, anxiety, psychosis, paranoid schizophrenia or bipolar disorder. Critics have faulted a self-help book he read, a muscle-building supplement he took called creatine and even upper-class privilege, which he had. Washington Post film critic Ann Hornaday wondered if the “sexist movie monoculture” epitomized by Judd Apatow bro flicks set the stage for Rodger’s rampage. The New York Times’ Ross Douthat wagged his finger predictably at feminism and its complicity with the sexual revolution’s ethos of “Hefnerism,” which he claims has led to the near-hegemonic belief that “sexual fulfillment is… the source and summit of a life well lived.”

Some of this commentary is on point, but much of it seems desperate to talk about anything but the most obvious issues: Elliot Rodger’s hatred of women, and his unfettered access to the guns and ammunition needed to commit this atrocity.

Confronted with something so globally pervasive and entrenched as male sexual entitlement, feminists have met the challenge. A woman by the name of Kaye M. started the hashtag #YesAllWomen, which raised our consciousness about the routine dehumanization of women.

It’s not that the feminist response to Isla Vista is misdirected. The question is why, at an equally critical moment in the national discussion about guns, the voices of gun-control advocates – with the exception of Richard Martinez, whose son was killed by Rodger – have been comparatively inaudible.

There is one bright light in this grim landscape. As Dahlia Lithwick points out on Slate, the movement to pressure businesses into denying service to gun nuts who flaunt their weapons under open-carry laws is gaining traction. Chipotle was the first to tell its customers to leave their guns at home. Sonic and Chili’s have followed suit; Jack in the Box and Home Depot may do so as well. And while “Chipotle to the rescue!” is hardly an inspiring rallying cry, one has to start somewhere. If the NRA and its allies can’t, for the moment, be consistently defeated in terms of whip counts and votes, they can, at the very least, be publicly shamed.

Richard Kim is executive editor of The Nation.com