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It's difficult to get the shares to short sometimes, but people do short them. I think IB frequently lists it as one of the most shorted ETFs. From what I hear, though, when VIX gets up there they start tightening up the margin requirements on this. Liquidity can be a problem when Vol spikes, too, so you could get caught pretty bad.
If you are an even more bold pilot you just sell call options. You can always do that even if there are no shares to short. But the same caveat applies. It's the most egregious example of the danger of selling options. I think could be more dangerous than VIX calendar spreads.
My risk manager will not allow either of these trades!
Only safe way to play it is long duration call spreads.
As a side note, it's worth learning and getting permissioned for options just to be able to add the short call technique to your toolbox. Because it makes it possible to short even when you cannot borrow the shares themselves, and furthermore there is a hard cap on your risk to the upside. So short squeezes are less dangerous.
It's the safe way to short these high-SKEW products like UVXY or JNUG.
