California is right. If someone else drives your car and causes bodily injury or property damage, you will be sued. Doesn't matter if it was stolen; you should have kept it protected better. The concept is negligence. If you permit your guns to be stolen, you are negligent, and negligence creates responsibility.
It's a moot point, anyway, because a couple of times now, I have defined guns as a special case because of their ballistic nature. In order to cause damage with a car, you have to come into physical contact with someone or some thing. Same with a club, a knife, your hands, an axe and most other methods of hurting someone. Ballistic weapons are unique in that they can inflict damage from a distance, from hiding and with great speed. As I said in another thread, I can kill you with a gun from a great distance -- I just heard the other night that a 50 cal sniper rifle has been used to "engage" (read: kill) someone at a distance of 2650 yards -- that's about a mile and a half! That would be tough to do with a car.
I went on to lump most deadly ballistic weapons into the same category, including cross bows, etc. Strictly speaking, bows and arrows, slingshots and rock throwing fall into the same category, but other than David and Goliath and Injuns, they aren't commonly used this way. Once other weapons disappear, if slingshots become a problem, we can always add them.
So, I reject your analogy. There are other uses for a car other than inflicting damage. There is no other use for a gun other than inflicting damage, even if it's just to put holes in paper targets. A paper punch is a better tool.
