Remember the old adage “buyer beware?” Well, take heart, consumers. You’re just as suspect lately as those businesses that plan to walk all over you for a buck.

In the pursuit of fairness and justice for all in the United States, the people of our nation have made room for a new personality to emerge over time.

We all know the type or have at least heard of it: the step-on-my-toes-and-I’ll-sue attitude.

Consumers can and should litigate a company when its product or service has inflicted damage or harm. That’s what product liability is all about.

But give Americans an inch, and some of them take a mile. Spill some scalding coffee on yourself at the drive-thru, and maybe you’ll get a few thousand from McDonald’s.

Those who are keeping up with the news know that anti-gun activists have hopped on the product-liability bandwagon.

Evidently they’ve taken a look at the legal altercations tobacco companies have endured from “loyal” consumers gone bitter following health consequences of cigarette smoking.

With the upswing in product liability cases — and successes — against tobacco companies in mind, the anti-gun activists maintain the two causes are similar; that gun manufacturers should pay for slip-ups in their consumers’ personal responsibilities.

And what a stink has arisen from the new product-liability bill running through the Senate, which potentially could place a $250,000 cap on punitive damages against small businesses.

If the bill passes, mom-and-pop businesses will be protected from atrocious lawsuits that threaten to squelch their business and take all their money.

Business owners embrace the bill. To them, the shield from angry, ignorant or money-hungry consumers is long overdue.

Gun-control activists, on the other hand, have initiated a campaign against the bill out of fear that it will defeat their efforts to prosecute gunmakers.

Their argument? Activists say guns, like many products found in U.S. households such as prescription drugs and insecticides, are considerably dangerous.

Unlike other consumer products, however, firearms are virtually unregulated, according to the Violence Policy Center’s fact sheet.

Gun-control groups aim to curb careless and criminal use of guns — kids opening fire in schools, murders in the streets and preventable accidents, to offer a few examples.

But they’re running along an unrealistic, unfair path.

Owning a gun is legal. Gun manufacturers’ responsibilities for their products should end as soon as a satisfied customer walks out of the store.

Why should those businesses be accountable for their customers’ behavior?

And why wouldn’t those gun customers take advantage of product liability just as smokers shift blame for lung cancer and emphysema to tobacco companies?

Supporters of this bill aren’t condoning gun violence. They challenge pointing the finger at the wrong perpetrator.

Contrary to what gun-control activists assert, the bill does not infringe upon consumer rights.

Excluding gun manufacturers from the product-liability bill is an infringement.

If equality is a primary national goal, let’s quit overprotecting consumers and recognizing that businesses aren’t always the vultures.

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Staci Hupp is a junior in journalism and mass communication from Grimes. She is the editor in chief of the Daily.