Originally Posted by Relentless

In legal terms, guns ought to be covered by Strict Liability because they are inherently dangerous. "In law, strict liability is a standard for liability which may exist in either a criminal or civil context. A rule specifying strict liability makes a person legally responsible for the damage and loss caused by his or her acts and omissions regardless of culpability."

Contractors who do dynamite blasting are usually covered by Strict Liability standards, meaning that their task is so inherently dangerous they ought to have taken every necessary precaution to prevent harm to anyone and there are no valid excuses for someone getting hurt as a result of their negligence.

If you own 1,000 handguns and you keep them properly secured... good for you. If you fail to secure them, for any reason, you accepted the risk of the penalty when you decided to own handguns in the first place. An inherently dangerous object requires you to secure it much more than you would secure a car or a loaf of bread. You might think keeping absolute security on 1,000 handguns is difficult and I would agree with you - but only the people capable of doing it should choose to own 1,000 handguns.

You can read more about the basic legal theory of Strict Liability here. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strict_liability

If people were absolutely responsible for their own guns, whether they fired them or had them stolen or failed to properly maintain them etc... everyone could own as many guns as they like and many fewer people would wind up getting injured by them. Best of all, responsible gun owners would never be hassled and irresponsible ones would be in jail where they belong.