Anyone who makes guns deserves a pat on the back 
With the possible exception of some of the lawsuit-dodging, name-swapping, cynical ones, I suppose, but it's hard to tell sometimes whether they suffer more from libel and slander or from chosen jerk-dom.
But most gun-makers, while I hope they want to make a profit badly enough to make good guns, must have some personal commitment to be involved in the industry in the first place. It's not one well and universally beloved, but rather a pursuit which often gets pegged as immoral, dangerous, reckless, heartless, and other words ending in "s."
That said, I would call out Kel-Tec for making innovative guns at very reasonable prices, and (as far as I know) not seeking to trade freedom for political favors. I hope that's a fair characterization.
I'd say by making nicely concealable, high-quality handguns, pistols in what are conventionally rifle calibers, folding rifles and pistol-cailber carbines, and the upcoming bullpup in .308, they're not exactly courting political approval. This is one reason I plan to make one of my next purchases one of their guns. The P11 seems like a great combination of size / power / reliability (I know the reputation is mixed rather than perfect, but it leans well on the positive side).
Not that it's the only company deserving such praise -- Serbu springs to mind -- but in breadth of offerings, and the number of people who have been able to arm for self-defense because their prices are reasonable, Kel-Tec seems to have a great size-to-impact ratio as a company.
Without doing a full-field survey, Serbu would probably be my runner-up: I'd like so many people to have reasonably-priced .50 cals that it'd be even more patently obviously ridiculous to further restrict them. Then, when *I* can afford one, that will still be a possibility
timothy
