olddude asks..(rhetorically, I presume)

"·.would you been happier if the guy threw a home made pipe bomb instead? How is that going to change anything?"

Well, *I* would be happier if a nut HAD to learn how to make a bomb and throw it accurately, than just to buy an off-the-rack Glock with extra magazines! A lot fewer would try!....and a lot of them would never manage it. Pipe bombs require buying straight gunpowder or even more harder to find stuff, and assembling it just right...

Sorry Dan, but that is a 'straw man' argument.