No, guns do not make you violent. Being predisposed to violence and/or killing someone might make you decide to buy a gun, though. What you quoted is that NPR

No, guns do not make you violent. Being predisposed to violence and/or killing someone might make you decide to buy a gun, though. What you quoted is that NPR-affiliate news blog's incorrect summary of a 1986 study of gunshot deaths in King County, WA from 1978-83. The paper abstract says: "For every case of self-protection homicide involving a firearm, there were 1.3 accidental deaths, 4.6 criminal homicides, and 37 suicides." Sample size was 50 homicides, 9 self-protection homicides, and only 2 of those by a resident against an intruder. If you state it like that and consider that most thwarted home invasions do not end in death for the intruder, the narrative of the site you linked starts to fall apart. Studies like that tend to fall apart further when you look at exactly who was shooting who under what circumstances. How many "non-intruders" were really drugged out "family" members? Is it not okay to defend yourself if you know your attacker? "Family members" could be relatives living elsewhere and known to be dangerous, but who stop by uninvited. When studies cite "children", that can include older teen gang bangers (and gang bangers can be younger, too). The rhetorical tricks are legion. Trying to impute homicidal impulses to people because they own a gun is simply ridiculous. You wonder why gun rights advocates get pissed off whenever any anti-gun stats or articles are tossed around? It's because they're almost always exaggerated, designed to mislead, and mis-attribute whether gun ownership or possession was the proximate cause of violence. That the author of that WBUR blog post is still peddling an "assault weapon bad!" narrative indicates that they are not to be trusted. What those people really want is to ban all semi-autos with detachable magazines. If you could enforce it and not grandfather old guns, that might reduce mass shootings (or the number of deaths per). I can agree with that 100%. I only disagree that you could pass that law and that it could be enforced (without suspending the rest of the bill of rights). It would affect not just guns used in the Las Vegas mass shooting, but every single ordinary (non-revolver) semi-auto handgun owned commonly for self defense. They too use detachable mags of arbitrary size. Any people using the emotional phrase "assault weapon", rather than talking honestly about banning functional characteristics like guns that accept detachable, potentially large magazines (you can't regulate magazines very well, you can 3d print ones that are good enough to be used for one mass shooting), are either not aware enough of the policy landscape to be offering an opinion, or they're intentionally writing misleading propaganda.