ucts: "Ford Pintos don't kill people; the people who run into the back of them do." McClurg writes:
Modern legal causation analysis focuses upon the foreseeability of the risk. Certainly, the overwhelming statistical evidence shows that one of the prime foreseeable risks of a handgun is that it will be used to kill someone during a criminal attack. In negligence cases, many modern decisions have held that intentional criminal acts to not supersede the negligence of the original actor where the criminal act was the very risk created by the negligence (McClurg 617).
McClurg is interested specifically in using the idea of negligence as a way of holding manufacturers and sellers of guns liable for the way they are used. He says that the leading case on this matter if that of Franco v. Bunyard in which the Arkansas Supreme Court reversed a summary judgment entered in favor of a gun dealer who sold a handgun to an escaped convict who used the gun to kill two persons and injure a third. The trial court argued that the escapee's criminal act was an unforeseeable intervening cause which superseded the negligence of the gun dealer, but the supreme court disagreed, holding that while the precise manner in which the weapon was used could not be foreseen, the fact that the weapon could be used to injure was foreseeable. McClurg does not hide the fact that he wants to use the concept of negligence to achieve maximum handgun control:
I oppose the policy in this country which, while it may provide solace and recreation for many people, inflicts untold misery and suffering upon many others (McClurg 618).
We may not wish to go as far as McClurg would, but registration is a simple step in asking for gun owners to have responsibility for their actions and their possessions.
This raises another argument in favor of gun control, the argument of balancing competing interests. On the one hand, there are those who feel they need a hand...