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As we prepare for the next round of struggle, we should think of guns as the most dangerous products that consumers can buy in the American marketplace, and find ways to make them safer. At a minimum, we need to take the safety of guns no less seriously than we treat the risks attached to other products. Consumer-oriented safety standards, like those that apply to other products on store shelves, would save hundreds of lives.

It’s official: hand-held hair dryers can harm your health and can be dangerous to your family. On page 37636 of the 2011 Federal Register — the official record of federal agencies’ actions — the Consumer Product Safety Commission announced that, based on an alarming trend of 0.3 hair dryer-related electrocutions per year, it was increasing its mandatory minimum standards to make America’s bathrooms safe once more. And so it should: through similar CPSC actions, the number of hair-dryer electrocutions has fallen from more than 15 a year in the 1980s to its current near-zero levels, and hair dryers remain plentiful and affordable. But there’s another hand-held device that causes at least seven hundred accidental deaths a year, about 500 of the victims being children — and yet the CPSC is powerless to intervene.

You may already have guessed what that device is, but in case you haven’t, you need only look to the legal definition of consumer products. The definition is broad, covering almost anything that a consumer might use, consume, or enjoy. There are a handful of exceptions, mostly of which deal with items regulated by other agencies — aircraft, for example, or food and drugs. Buried in the middle of the list of exceptions, however, is this oblique reference: “any article which, if sold by the manufacturer, producer, or importer, would be subject to the tax imposed by section 4181 of the Internal Revenue Code of 1986.” If that makes you think that someone — say, the same lobbyists who convinced Congress to ignore overwhelming public support for background checks — was deliberately trying to obscure what the provision refers to, you’re right. For those few readers who do not have a handy copy of the tax code on the bookshelf, section 4181 covers firearms and ammunition.

Unlike any other dangerous consumer product, firearms and ammunition are not subject to safety regulation by another agency. The FDA controls dangerous or adulterated food and drugs, and aircraft safety is under the FAA’s jurisdiction, so one might suppose that the Bureau of “Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms” would do the same for firearms, but ATF is not in the safety business for guns. Existing laws and regulations don’t include safety requirements for handguns or rifles — including assault rifles — beyond a single vague provision that requires federal firearms licensees (but not ‘private’ sellers) give buyers a lockable case or similar device. Combined with the 2005 law in which gun manufacturers persuaded Congress to exempt them from most tort lawsuits, the ordinary incentives that persuade producers to think about safety are strikingly absent in the firearms industry.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/norman-i-silber/guns-consumer-regulation_b_3174972.html