Once upon a time, there was a deadly product. However, most people did not think it was nearly as deadly as it actually was. A large, booming industry grew up around this product. Many thousands - millions, even - of hard-working people worked in this industry. Most of them were good people who loved their families and had no idea they were selling a product that would very likely kill their customers, or the children of their customers.
Over time, evidence began to emerge that revealed the product to be exceedingly dangerous. Millions of users were dying horribly, and the public became outraged. The industry producing the product began to spend millions of dollars assuring people of the safety of the product, but it didn't last long. The secret got out.
This put members of that industry in a bind. If they continued to deny that their products were dangerous, they would lose credibility, and their sales would continue to decrease. If they tried to find a way to make their product safer, they might spend millions of dollars on a lost cause, since there was no guarantee that their product could ever be made safe.
So instead of moving to another industry, or trying to make their product safer, or giving in and accepting intense state and federal regulation, they began to push back. The industry published phony studies and emphasized apocryphal anecdotes touting the importance of their product. They began to market it as a "freedom" and a "right," even running to the Constitution of the United States in an effort to insist that any regulation, no matter how reasonable, would be impossible. They began to blame the victims, insisting that those harmed by the product had no one but themselves to blame.
But it didn't work. Public opinion turned against the product. When studies finally were permitted, the danger of the product was undeniable. Without the protection of a federal government willing to defend them against the people, the industry that made the product was soon drowning in lawsuits. People who used the products made by the industry became social pariahs, and soon they could only use the products on their own property or in controlled, strictly regulated indoor facilities. As such, the industry is now dying, just like its customer base.
The industry is, of course, the tobacco industry. But it could just as easily be the gun industry. By refusing to submit to the will of the people, the gun industry, like the tobacco industry before it, has made itself socially unacceptable. Rather than giving in to reasonable demands on tort liability, education and regulation, they have dug in their heels for a short temporary profit. This will soon backlash on them, and they will be subject to regulation on an immense and damning scale, which will make it very difficult for them to make money at all.
On the upside, some day, guns will be as popular and widespread as cigarettes, and the only people harmed by them will be those few holdouts, old-timers and social outcasts who buck the popular opinion and actually use the things.