If you are going to argue about terminology, argue first about how can there be a "design space for the socially acceptable uses of weapons". The phrase is laughable. Weapons are for killing--that's why they're called weapons. Arguing about what to actually call the physical thing that does the damage is missing the point and is trying to draw attention away from the real purpose of the thing.
Yes, these weapons are for killing. Using a firearm for home defense is socially accepted. This is exactly what makes it tricky to ban "mass murder" weapons while keeping "justified homicide" weapons legal.
”Using a firearm for home defense is socially accepted”
In the USA. There seems to be some correlation between that and the number of mass shootings in a country, so, maybe, that has to change if one wants to decrease the number of mass shootings.
"Mass murder weapon" versus "justified homicide weapon" is just a situational distinction that does nothing to address the fact that the physical thing is identical and inextricably tied to horrible, irrevocable actions. Your gun doesn't become a "justified homicide weapon" until after the fact. Up until then, it's always just a weapon because you can't prevent or enforce its use for a particular, sanctioned purpose.
They don't have to be identical physical things. That's what they mean by design space. What features (that affect things like range and rate of fire and accuracy and so on) should be legal on civilian weapons?
For the US even something like limited internal magazines isn't politically tenable (a 5 shot internal magazine and manual action would still be useful for hunting but could not be used to shoot hundreds of rounds per minute into a crowd of people).
Hell, I won't be real shocked if nothing gets done about bump stocks (which don't really have any purpose beyond shooting for fun).
