I understand the emotion behind your statement, but I feel it's due to the extreme frustration a lot of people (myself including) that this stuff keeps happening.
It's not a hardware problem, but it's very easy to focus on the hardware because it's solid and tangible. But the simple fact is, that people, either individually or in the form of a company, will develop and refine products and techniques to make things (including guns) work better and be better suited for a particular task.
People work on guns to make them handle better, to make them balance better, to make them better able to absorb recoil, to make them get back on target faster, and to make them easier to control. Also to make them more accurate, more comfortable, easier to hold, and so on and so forth. None of this is really a surprise. Evolution is a fact of life.
The techniques are applied to lots of kinds of guns, but because of the dominance of the AR-15-type rifle that is where the general public sees them. So even though rifles are only used to murder about 350 people a year (2016 numbers; the prior few years were less than 300 per) compared to 8,000+ people murdered annually with handguns, it's the focal point.
But this is what people seem to be trying to do:
Under the circumstances of a lone-wolf attack on a random concrete building full of helpless people with no way to escape; at a random time on a random day; usually with no warning; for the sake of simply slaughtering as many people as they can before the cops show up; under these circumstances the hardware limitation will prevent enough killing to call it a "mass shooting".
A lack of AR-15s will not deter these people. They're crazy. It's like saying that "since the Sandy Hook shooter drove a sedan to the school, we need to ban sedans". These people don't have a specific mission to accomplish; as long as they get to see the blood spray and hear the screams of terror, that is enough for them! Mission accomplished! They aren't like a military mission, trying to fight their way to seize control of a vital communications junction or to free POWs trapped in a prison; they just want slaughter before they die themselves.
Trying to produce a lack of AR-15s, however, will keep Republicans in control of things.
There is no easy solution. I doubt there is in fact a solution, at least not one that doesn't entail single-payer health care that includes full mental-health coverage as well as a shitload of time for it to work. My real fear is that, because the pervasiveness of the Internet and social media, this kind of event can marinate in the minds of sick people until another random asshole opens fire. Hell, the brother of the Florida school shooter is as sick as his murderous brother; he's thrilled at all the attention and wants to start a goddamn fan club.
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