EDIT: I see my post is being downvoted. I know that it may come across as insensitive to immediately leap to the gun control debate, but frankly I'm more angry than upset by this news. How many times does it have to happen? We have a good 48 hours of emotional outpouring and then everyone forgets it ever happened.
Was the Oklahoma-city bombing a wake-up call for "explosives control"? Was the 2009 Chengdu bus-fire (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2009_Chengdu_bus_fire) a wake-up call for diesel control? Was the Osaka school massacre (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osaka_school_massacre) a wake-up call for knife-control? Was the 2012 Toronto mall shooting a wake-up call for gun-control in Canada, which already has extremely stringent gun-laws?
It's all too easy to blame the gun in these situations, but guns are just tools, as are knives, and diesel fuel, and even explosives.
It's not the gun. It never was the gun. It's the person.
Note that I am not advocating getting rid of all guns. But we need to have an honest discussion about them, and that starts with being truthful with ourselves about their very nature.
Overwhelmingly guns are owned and used by peaceful, law-abiding civilians. That they can be misused does not mean we should punish those who have done no wrong.
And the idea that we can live in a simple world where we can divorce ourselves from violence, death, responsibility, and from tools of lethal force is simply naive. Pacifism is a luxury of those who have never experienced the threat of violence. In the real world there are violent men with bad intentions and being able to forestall such men by using lethal force can save lives, your own life and the lives of others. You can either turn away from that truth or foist it off on the responsibility of others or you can face it directly. But you can't make it simply go away.
The point is the efficiency. The magnification of force is so great with guns compared to other weapons as to render the comparison moot. If I had a weapon that could instantly vaporize a person of choice with the push of a button, this tool would rightly be condemned far and wide. Yet the same tool could be used in a purely defensive manner. We all subconsciously understand the importance of considering the magnitude of force magnification.
I completely agree with your second paragraph. I am far from a pacifist. The point is that these conversations seriously lack nuance, each side takes points to the absolute extreme as a tactic to validate their side. There is much nuance in the middle that needs to be considered. Acknowledging the nature of guns is a starting point.