2018.04.24
Been dabbling with podcasts, including some from outside my echo chamber. Joe Rogan had some NRA youtuber dude Colion Noir, a bit more interesting than some demographically, since he's African American. Didn't listen to all of it (I think I prefer retrogaming podcasts' backlog, tbh) but I guess their take on the old "guns don't kill people" trope is the "there's all this fuss about INANIMATE OBJECTS".
The counter is obvious; like Ani Difranco says "every tool is a weapon if you hold it right", and while, say, my tuba case is a chair if I sit on it, it's not a very good chair! The intention of a designed object is built into it and has enormous ramifications in its final capabilities.
Yes, a slew of pedestrians got killed by a rental van in Toronto, but the other purposes for a van justify their continued presence in society. The intent of a gun is to intimidate or put metal into people or things, and any rational conversation about its regulation and the rights to own one (the NRA's startling successful long burn campaign to put aside the 2nd Amendment's previous interpretation as a collective right notwithstanding) has to take that into account.