I wanted to post in another thread on this, but couldn't get it to allow me.

So... why not? Unpublishing is a work around, but it isn't efficient. Joomla still needs to slog through all those unpublished items. Why not include a delete? I found a plugin to do it, but it screwed up front end login. So I know it's able to be done. Unpublishing is not the right way to do it.

Which thread was it?
You can add it as a feature request for the upcoming 2.7.1 version here -> github.com/getk2/k2