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"Are gun manufacturers responsible when their products are used to cause harm? That's the central issue in a case brought before the California Supreme Court last week, and in a case decided last month by New York's highest court.

The outcomes have implications for the gun industry specifically as well as tort liability law in general. They are closely watched cases.

The California case involves a massacre in San Francisco in 1993, when Gian Luigi Ferri used a gun to kill eight people, wound six and kill himself. The victims are suing Navegar, which made the gun Ferri used.

So far, at least, the court "appeared reluctant ... to make legal history by holding gunmakers liable for the criminal use of their weapons," the San Francisco Chronicle reported. A ruling is expected later this year.

"This gun allowed Ferri to do this, but I thought you said it caused this. That's different," said Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar to Dennis Henigan, lawyer for the victims and the general counsel for the Center to Prevent Handgun Violence.

"Where do you hold the line?" John Lott wondered when he talked to us; he's a professor at Yale Law School and author of "More Guns, Less Crime." "Are the auto companies responsible for accidents caused by drivers? It's a slippery slope. Once you cross that line, there's no place to stop other than to sue every company for what customers do wrong with their products. These are just harassment suits to try to impose very large legal costs on gun manufacturers, who are in a very small industry."

The result, ironically, could be more crime. The legal costs will force manufacturers to charge more for guns, which will make it harder for poor people to purchase them. "Poor people benefit most from having handguns," Mr. Lott observed, because they are more likely to live in high-crime areas. "So poor people will be hurt. There will be a greater increase in crime than if gun prices stayed lower."

His book concludes that criminals don't care much about gun laws, obtaining guns on the black market. But criminals do care about whether their victims have guns because then the victims can shoot back.

In a similar case heard before New York state's Court of Appeals (the state's highest court), a unanimous verdict April 26 found in favor of gunmakers, even though this court is considered one of the most liberal in the land.

"We should be cautious in imposing novel theories of tort liability while the difficult problem of illegal guns in the United States remains the focus of a national policy debate," Court of Appeals Judge Richard C. Wesley wrote in his opinion. The case now will go before the U.S. Second Circuit Court of Appeals, which had asked the New York court for this ruling concerning state law.

The California Supreme Court likewise should side with common sense and the Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms and find that only people, not inanimate objects, can be found guilty of willfully taking a human life."