Sure one might argue that if you have the intent to kill, it's not necessary for one to use a gun, you have alternatives such as grenades, knives, chainsaw or even your bare hand if it's lethal enough. This is how you derive that "the gun is not evil, it's the people who are" statement.
But guns, under the category of firearms (not only guns, what about rocker launchers?), are almost-certainly designated to kill, and what is the top priority of firearm? Aim to be the most efficient killing machine.
So if you use a gun, it's not necessary that you are going to kill people, but it is very likely that you are imposing a threat to do so, regardless of if you're attacking/defending.
Therefore, trying to apply the gun analogy to current state of youtube-dl is an injustice to youtube-dl, as you compared an intrinsically evil entity to another.
Like whenever you're not facing a murderous psychopath.
It's a tragedy when two people who have a gun feel the need to kill the other, over nothing more than the fear that the other might have and use one too. Even if one was breaking into the house of the other.
If you're a healthy human being you don't want to kill the intruder, you want to be safe. Neither does the intruder want to kill you, they want to get away with your stuff.
Two people not wanting to kill, being forced to kill simply by the presence, or even just the possible presence of a gun.
If you can't see the intrinsic evil in that, then I guess you must really think lightly about killing people.
Software is not typically purposed for piracy.
Maybe "trying to hit someone with your car"? Not sure.
If guns don't kill people, people kill people, then certainly congress can accept that software doesn't pirate copyrighted works, people pirate copyrighted works.