OK, you want to pretend that a firearm is "just an inanimate object" when it's not--it's a fucking weapon. They are intended to be used as weapons to injure or kill.
I've got better "inanimate objects" for you to understand how stupid that argument is: Nuclear Weapons or Nerve Gas.
After all, they are perfectly safe if you follow the safety rules. In fact, it is so safe that one site I worked at worked with nerve gas in an urban area! Betcha didn't know that the US Army plays with the stuff at Fort Detrick and the Aberdeen Proving Ground right in the NorthEast Megapolis!
Come on, don't you want your neighbor to have some VX or Sarin in his garage?
How about a Thermonuclear weapon--and I'm not tallking the piddly things they dropped on Japan, but a big job in the megaton range?
After all. they are just inanimate objects--what's to worry?
It's just an inanimate object.
