Owning a car increases your chance of dying in a car accident too. Owning a table saw increases your chance of losing a finger. Owning a boat increases your chance of drowning. Etc.

Do I think people should be walking around with military-grade weapons? No. Do I think people should be allowed a shotgun to hunt with or whatever? Sure. Do I think there should be background checks and all that to help make sure they’re used in a responsible manner? Hell yes. Do I wish guns had never been invented? Yes.

But come on. This guy apparently went room to room in his house and systematically murdered everyone in it. It wasn’t an accident, which is what generally drives the statistic you mentioned. Who knows what was going through his mind at the time. But I’m guessing that, while the gun probably made the act easier, the gun wasn’t the enabler nor catalyst here. Given what happened, I’m guessing he would have found another tool to use if he had no gun on hand. I’m not going to be morbid and name all the things within reach at the average house you could use to murder a 9 year old, but it’s a lot of things.

You’ve made a sound argument against owning cars and table saws and boats, not one in favor of owning guns or that they’re safe to have in the home, especially in the face of overwhelming evidence.

And what you think is irrelevant; the facts speak for themselves. All you’re saying is that you’re choosing to ignore the facts, ignore reality, because you think you somehow know better. And regardless of your attempts at rationalization, it doesn’t take much to figure out that, without a gun in the home, this person would have found it far more difficult to so quickly and instantly murder his whole family and then himself, and family members would have had a much higher chance of survival and/or escape.

Even faced with the prospect of the much more difficult task of killing his whole family by other means would have greatly reduced the likelihood of him following through with his plan at all.