The idea that guns are tools is naive psychologically as it ignores their core purpose as a weapon and why we have a constitutional right to possess them. A hammer could be a weapon but if you study concept formation, it's core characteristic is as an implement for doing things that are not the use of force.
This is not true for guns. Their core is for weaponry and the sports usages are derivatives of practice for their weapons use, even if the technical gun has moved away from being a useful weapon (like a Biathlon gun). There are a few very rare guns as tools - some specialized large gauge things used to take scale out of blast furnaces. But they are trivial.
It is a debated issue that firearms prime aggression and move those so motivated to aggress to actually take action. The evidence is mixed and not strong. It is similar to the video game debate. As an aside, that's why the NRA's arguments that it wasn't guns but video games was stupid as the same research arguing that games prime aggression indicated that guns in similar experimental situations prime aggression.
Big caveat!! In the field, there is strong debate that the priming aggression effect is limited and not of real consequence. Meaning a good person isn't compelled by either to become violent. Do they enhance a violent person to act violently - quite the debate and this is subtle point.
Calling guns tools opens you to bans and controls as tools have no BOR protections and the argument looks disingenuous. We have the right for guns for SD and defense against tyranny primarily. Not to punch holes in paper or Bambi. These applications could be accomplished (as in other countries) by having guns kept at clubs and checked out for hunts or target shoots. In fact, Rachel Maddow is a gun enthusiast. Took her dates to the range. Shoots an AR and 1911 AND says the guns should be kept at the club.
About banning types of guns - 5 is enough drives me crazy WHEN that statement claims that those who carry more are nuts, Rambos, etc. Carrying a J for convenience is a different issue. However, the staunch conservative who denounced ARs is not hard to find. Bush, Clinton, Bush, Obama, Trump, Biden - all have denounced them and/or supported AWBs. That looks 50-50 to me. Bob Dole (who just passed and a hero) was not a black rifle fan.
If a new population segment buys guns - that is all for the good. Maybe they aren't members of your political club on other issues but that is irrelevant.
OK- Say guns are tools for preventing tyranny, plain and simple. Not their original intent, (warfare, first documented use, Battle of Crécy, 1346) nor their original use on this continent. (Dual use-
self defense, and acquiring food.) The preventing Tyranny aspect didn't come about until Tyranny was imposed upon a sleepy little backwater colony of the British Empire peopled by those who had been largely ignored, except for trade, by the Crown, until they were taxed at rates we would love to only be taxed at. They also demanded to have MP's from the colonies. It didn't help that the monarch was insane, his son not much more sane, and
his advisers all on the take.
Would revising the statement "The mind is the weapon, everything else is just tools", a statement designed to create thought about potential uses of everyday items (shovels, screwdrivers, vehicles, etc.) as
ad hoc weapons when either caught without a weapon, (not all of us step out of the shower with an AR-15 and a smile) or the weapon we have ceases to function, (so as to not create dependence only on a mechanical device that can fail) be to your satisfaction?
It should not, because despite the hubbub over whether guns are "tools" or not, to be thought of as merely another tool on the belt, like some LEO's do, (yes, we know the THR members that are or were LEO's don't match that description, but you all know or knew some who do.) like their radio, or cuffs, the semantic dancing around the word tool is pointless. When Snap-On starts making firearms, maybe I'll consider them as tools in that sense.
If they are only 'tools' for preventing Tyranny. wouldn't the logical thing to do be stockpiling AR's and Artillery at the individual, Town and State level, some purchased by lottery profits, some donated by wealthy individuals, as the Colonists did with Charleville and Brown Bess muskets (the AR's of their time) and cannon, powder and shot?
If guns are only tools for hunting, AR's are quite useable for that also, despite some grumpy old men who believe that a hunting rifle, pistol, or shotgun can only have a walnut stock and blued steel and that some in Govt. will not come for their O/U Trap/Sporting Clays/Skeet gun given the chance.
(BTW, I love blued, wood stocked guns, and shoot Trap, and run into these guys far too often.)
As for what causes violence in people- my belief is that the purposeful deconstruction of the education system by 'progressives' over the last at least 50 years, and the teaching of using emotions for decision making by the education system (instead of logic and or analysis), coupled with the indoctrination into Socialism that the education system enforces (all the way up through the PhD level) has damaged this nation far more than video games or the ownership of firearms ever has. Toss in the abolishment of mental health facilities and their capability of oversight of patient compliance on maintaining medication, and it's a wonder the whole USA doesn't resemble Manhattan in
Escape From New York. 
