Well he can’t be much of a liberal, he wants to take away peoples right to choose!
“gun deaths” is a propaganda metric. It is designed to misinform and channel the debate.
To illustrate this, consider “hospital deaths”.
In developed countries, there are millions of hospital deaths. The more hospitals in a country, the more hospital deaths. We must ban hospitals, as that will stop all hospital deaths.
You are righter than you know. This is the proper "angle" of retort. It leverages the Culture of Death's confected "Right to Die" against them.