San Jose Rail Yard Shooting - Multiple dead + Suspect Dead

[Pipeline 1010]

This is exactly right. Firearms are tools for killing.

Firearms are tools that excel at killing, but they are rarely used for that. It is a stretch to say that firearms purpose is to kill when the percent of firearms used to do this is a rounding error away from zero. It isn't what the vast majority of people do with guns and it isn't what the vast majority of guns are used for.

There is only one method of stopping people from using them for that purpose.

There isn't a way to stop people from using guns to kill. There are only ways to reduce the amount of times it happens. Ending the war on drugs would likely lead to a massive and immediate reduction in gun murder. Increasing the availability and quality of mental health treatment would likely lead to a drop in gun murder. Bans of a small subset of guns used in killings isn't a promising path to accomplish anything. Reduction in magazine capacity or banning pistol grips on rifles will likely change nothing.

Shooting each other is a national pastime and we either ban all firearms or we live with shootings.

If shooting each other is my nation's pastime, then why do almost none of us ever do it? I don't participate in that and nobody I've ever known has. I trust you've never shot at anybody. That doesn't change the fact that we have a problem that we need to address, but maybe we can do it without this kind of hyperbole.

I see this as a binary choice. We live with killings or we ban firearms.

In some ways yes. We don't have the ability to eliminate all gun murders. I do see options that can drastically reduce gun murder (and many of those options reduce non-gun murder as well). We should pursue those immediately and avoid letting perfect become the enemy of good.