Gov. Mark Dayton said he thinks stricter gun laws are a good idea but doesn’t think they’d prevent mass shootings such as Thursday’s massacre at an Oregon community college.

“I don’t know that changing Minnesota’s gun laws is going to change the dynamic that — I’m just speculating here — some very lost and forlorn person (believes they can) seize the publicity that other events of this kind have achieved,” Dayton said Friday morning.

Dayton’s comments came a day after President Barack Obama — like Dayton, a Democrat — made a call for lawmakers of all levels to enact new gun laws.

“I’d ask the American people to think about how they can get our government to change these laws and to save lives and to let young people grow up,” Obama said. “That will require a change of politics on this issue.”

Dayton said he supports closing the “gun show loophole” where private sellers don’t have to conduct the same background checks on a gun buyer that normal gun stores do, because that would “level the playing field” for “people selling guns legally and properly in this state.” But he said that wouldn’t be a panacea.

“It’s true insanity,” Dayton said of mass shootings, “but I don’t think changing a gun show loophole in Minnesota is going to put an end to that, although it’s the right thing to do.”

Political constraints also play a role in Dayton’s resignation: “I think Minnesota’s laws are as strong as you’re going to get out of the Minnesota Legislature, for one,” he said.

Dayton said Obama should propose federal laws instead of asking states to act.

“If the president has something he believes is going to make a significant difference at the national level, he should say what that is,” Dayton said.

Obama has proposed specific gun control legislation in the past, such as magazine limits and bans on assault weapons, but didn’t make any specific proposals Thursday.

Dayton pointed to social and psychological problems to explain gun violence Friday, instead of the nation’s gun laws.

“It’s societal craziness,” Dayton said. “… I think it underscores the violent nature of our society and the increasingly spectacular violence that again gets attention.”

Asked if there are too many guns in America, Dayton demurred.

“I think there are too many guns in the hands of people who shouldn’t have them,” the governor said. “But how do you keep the wrong people from getting their hands on guns? No one’s come up with an answer to that. If they do, I’m all ears.”

Follow David Montgomery at twitter.com/dhmontgomery.