A funny thing happened in the Federal courts last week, which few people noticed other than the gun nuts and constitutional lawyers: the Court of Appeals in Manhattan ruled that Congress had the right to pass a law which would automatically dismiss any lawsuit brought against the gun industry for knowingly selling guns that would end up on the black market.

Guns are the bane of our existance. More people are dead from gunshots than any of us can bear. We read in the paper all the time about innocent victims of stray bullets, armed robberies, accidental shootings and stick-ups. What gives? Our society loves guns. That was the point of Michael Moore's film, "Bowling for Columbine."

The gun problem can be easily corrected, in several ways. First, strict gun control with strict background checks. Second, hold the gun industry responsible for its knowing distribution of lethal weapons into the hands of the worst scumbags society has to offer. New York City tried the second route, bringing a lawsuit against the gun industry. According to the Court of Appeals, "The City claimed that the Firearms Suppliers market guns to legitimate buyers with the knowledge that those guns will be diverted through various mechanisms into illegal markets."

Specifically, the lawsuit claimed the following:

Defendants have reason to know or should know that (a) some of the firearms they manufacture and/or distribute will be diverted into the hands of those who would violate the law, and (b) they could take steps to reduce the number of firearms that fall into the hands of criminals by changing their merchandising practices.

Reasonable measures are available to ensure that the guns sold and distributed by defendants do not find their way into a secondary illegal market.

Defendants could, but do not, monitor, supervise or regulate the sale and distribution of their guns by their downstream distributors or deal-customers. Defendants could, but do not, monitor, supervise or train distributors or dealers to avoid sales that feed the illegal secondary market. Defendants make no effort to determine those distributors and dealers whose sales disproportionately supply the illegal secondary market.

The case also asserted that "The United States leads the world in the number of people and in the number of children who die and are injured each year by guns. The yearly toll of several thousand persons killed compares to no more than a few hundred per year in every other industrialized country. A teenager in the United States is more likely to die from a gunshot wound than from all natural causes combined."

That lawsuit was chugging along when Congress decided that cases like this were bad for America. To protect the gun makers, Congress passed the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. Of course, George W. Bush, the Texas cowboy, signed that bill into law in 2005. That meant that lawsuits like the one brought by New York City were in jeopardy unless the City could find a loophole in the law to keep the case going. It couldn't find any such loophole, and the Court of Appeals ruled that this lawsuit has to be dismissed.

Very few industries in this country get favorable treatment from the government like the gun industry. Is there a macho strand in the national DNA that compels normal people to fall in love with the one instrument that can cause instant death, even by accident? What does it say about a society that lets the cat of the bag in allowing millions of guns to circulate into the hands of God knows what? Once the guns are in the wrong hands, you can't get them back. Anyone with a brain will tell you this would be a very different country without guns. Probably a lot safer.

Guns will never become an issue any national political campaign except to the extent candidates fall over themselves in promising to the gun nuts that they will protect the proverbial "right to bear arms" and that they themselves fondly remember going hunting with their fathers and uncles when they were little. Guns are like the Bible. Some voters will not support your candidacy if you come out against gun ownership and promote strict gun control.

The silver lining about guns was that the Supreme Court has never ruled that the "right to bear arms" in the Second Amendment actually endorses a right to own a gun. This may sound strange to people who only know the Second Amendment to refer to the "right to bear arms." But that's not what the Amendment really says. It says this:

A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed

What the hell does this mean? No one knows. There are too many commas, too many clauses, for any one phrase in the Second Amendment to have any meaning that makes sense in the context of other provisions of the Amendment. Used to be that scholars believed it did not protect any individual right but a collective public right to have a militia, such as the National Guard.

The Supreme Court is about the re-interpret the Second Amendment to protect some kind of individual gun ownership. We know this because the Supreme Court heard oral argument a few weeks ago in a case arising from Washington DC, a city rife with gun violence. The City banned handguns: "This law restricts residents from owning handguns, excluding those grandfathered in by registration prior to 1975 and those possessed by active and retired law enforcement officers. The law also requires that all firearms including rifles and shotguns be kept "unloaded and disassembled or bound by a trigger lock."

The gun nuts who want the Second Amendment re-interpreted immediately challenged the Washington DC law, claiming that it violates the Constitution. The general sense is that the Supreme Court, with its recent George W. Bush appointees, is going to find in their favor. A court that has been scaling back individual rights over the last several decades is going to have to jump through hoops to find that the vaguely worded Second Amendment gives you the right to own a gun. The Supreme Court's expanded interpretation of the Second Amendment will likely be issued at the end of June. The presidential candidates will avoid any criticism of the anticipated Supreme Court decision the way that the rest of us would tiptoe around a loaded pistol sitting on the kitchen table.