The anti-gun commenters at Volokh are really dense. Over and over people try to explain to them about personal responsibility and how a gun is an inanimate object which requires a live person for its utility, and try to explain the difference between negligence and strict liability. I will make two quick comments. One, there's a Kossack there who thinks guns are an "ultrahazardous item" and therefore gun manufacturers should be treated accordingly. When someone points out that automobiles actually kill many more people each year than guns do, and you don't hear a cry to make those an "ultrahazardous item", the Kossack says, yeah, but guns are intended to kill. So they're ultrahazardous, even though they aren't very hazardous, because of the intent of the manufacturer? (or someone. I'm not clear who the intender is). Which is it? Of course, that grants his proposition that guns are manufactured with the intent to kill, well, something.
People proceed on this issue with no facts. They have a gut instinct, a knee-jerk reaction, and then they go with it. Guns are dangerous! Guns kill people! The news media is complicit in spreading the story that guns are only used for evil, and for tons of evil, at that. Lost are the stories of someone who uses a gun in a proper manner, who protects with it, who saves another. Lost are the statistics that show that a bucket of water around the house causes more deaths each year than guns. I don't pretend that you can find truthful statistics on such a polarizing issue. But most of these folks don't even look for them.
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