A parent purchases a firearm for home protection and stores the weapon, fully-loaded, in the drawer of a bedside table for quick access in times of need. Some months or years later, the protective parent’s young son finds the weapon, plays with it, and ultimately kills himself with it.A tragedy, to be certain; a natural parental inclination, hampered by a lack of foresight that arguably could be characterized as negligent, results in the death of a child. It’s also basis for a cautionary tale that can be spun in many ways – but grounds for a lawsuit against the weapon’s manufacturer?

Many observers would note that it is the parent’s responsibility to store their firearms in a responsible fashion, under lock and key, perhaps unloaded, and certainly beyond the reach of children.

Odd notions strike at times of duress, though, and opportunism is immune to tact, logic, fairness and personal accountability. Opportunistic litigators, in particular, are prone to seek out “deep pockets,” some party that might be liable – in a potentially profitable sense – even in the most unlikely of scenarios.

In our hypothetical tragedy, some clever legal buzzard might ask of the firearm in question “why didn’t the gun manufacturer include a child safety lock” and make the claim that the arms-maker in question “doesn’t do enough to protect children.”

MySpace.com, now the subject of a lawsuit brought by the mother of a 14-year-old female MySpace user allegedly sexually assaulted by 19-year-old male MySpace user, finds itself in a position something like that of the gun manufacturer in the hypothetical posed above.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs assert that MySpace has “absolutely no meaningful protections or security measures to protect underage users,” and has “no financial incentive to institute any meaningful security measures,” because instituting such measures might include blocking out the same young people who make the site such a popular phenomenon.

Since no reasonable person would argue that MySpace has any direct liability in the alleged sexual assault (at least I’m fairly certain that nobody is claiming that MySpace actively and openly encourages sexual assaults on minors and/or the posting of fraudulent information), the question is whether the site has any shared or “vicarious” liability for the crime.

“We take aggressive measures to protect our members,” said Hemanshu Nigam, chief security officer for MySpace, according to the Associated Press. “Ultimately, Internet safety is a shared responsibility. We encourage everyone on the internet to engage in smart Web practices and have open family dialogue about how to apply offline lessons in the online world.”

The first part of Nigam’s statement, the claim that MySpace takes “aggressive measures to protect our members” sounds more like PR/marketing-speak (read: “bullshit”) than actual policy, but I couldn’t agree more with the latter portion of the response.

When one sees their child out the door in the morning on a school day, in that moment when the parent accepts that their child is about to be out of their sight and direct influence, entirely, for the next several hours, it is not uncommon for that parent to issue certain words of wisdom, advice and caution to the departing child.

“Don’t talk to strangers or accept rides from them,” a parent might caution their child, or “Come straight home after school – don’t go tagging walls and huffing glue with your loser friends.”

Parents need to recognize a simple fact; a “conversation” conducted via MySpace is relatively safe, arguably safer than a similar exchange with a “pen pal” via letters sent through the regular postal system – letters that could be labeled with your street address. When such conversations cease to be exchanges at a distance, when the contact becomes face-to-face, that is the time at which ugly possibilities can become real.

It is not the medium through which a dialogue takes place that creates or fosters the “threat,” and there is a limited amount that regulating such mediums can accomplish to mitigate that threat. MySpace is no more likely to be able to verify the identity of its users than any other online service and, as any credit card processor or merchant who accepts online payment can tell you, online verification of identity is an inexact science, at best.

Educating your child is the best defense against their exploitation. Teach them the lessons you have learned online; anybody claiming to be “20-something” and “thin” is quite likely to be “lying through their virtual teeth,” and anybody claiming to be the “young, handsome, captain of the football team” is more likely a “desperate loser” trolling MySpace for a user too inexperienced to see through their pathetic puffery.

Bringing lawsuits against third parties, particular a third party who provides nothing more than the means by which two other parties communicate, has nothing to do with the future protection of minors, despite any rhetoric to the contrary spouted by the attorneys for the plaintiffs.

Protection of children, as has been the case throughout human history, should remain the job of parents, primarily. Reasonable efforts on the part of society at large to assist in the protection of children are fine – lower speed limits for vehicle traffic in school zones, for instance – but litigating towards a safer internet won’t work.

If the lawsuit against MySpace succeeds (unlikely), the plaintiff’s victory is more likely to have an adverse impact on online commerce – by discouraging investment in and advertising on social networking sites – than a positive impact on the online safety of children.