Quick edit: If this is considered in violation of rule 5, then please delete. I do not wish to bait political arguments and drama.
Edit 2: I would just like to say that I would consider this question answered, or at least as answered as a hypothetical can be. My personal takeaway is that holding weapons manufacturers responsible for gun violence is unrealistic. Regardless of blame and accountability, the guns already exist and will continue to do so. We must carefully consider any and all legislation before we enact it, and especially where firearms are concerned. I hope our politicians and scholars continue working to find compromises that benefit all people. Thank you all for contributing and helping me to better understand the situation of gun violence in America. I truly hope for a better future for the United States and all of humanity. If nothing else, please always treat your fellow man, and your firearm, with the utmost respect. Your fellow man deserves it, and your firearm demands it for the safety of everyone.
First, I’d like to highlight that I understand that, legally speaking, arms manufacturers are not typically accountable for the way their products are used. My question is not “why aren’t they accountable?” but “why SHOULDN’T they be accountable?”
Also important to note that I am asking from an American perspective. Local and national gun violence is something I am constantly exposed to as an American citizen, and the lack of legislation on this violence is something I’ve always been confused by. That is, I’ve always been confused why all effort, energy, and resources seem to go into pursuing those who have used firearms to end human lives that are under the protection of the government, rather than the prevention of the use of firearms to end human lives.
All this leads to my question. If a company designs, manufactures, and distributes implements that primarily exist to end human life, why shouldn’t they be at least partially blamed for the human lives that are ended with those implements?
I can see a basic argument right away: If I purchase a vehicle, an implement designed and advertised to be used for transportation, and use it as a weapon to end human lives, it’d be absurd for the manufacturer to be held legally accountable for my improper use of their implement. However, I can’t quite extend that logic to firearms. Guns were made, by design, to be effective and efficient at the ending of human lives. Using the firearms in the way they were designed to be used is the primary difference for me. If we determine that the extra-judicial ending of human life is a crime of great magnitude, shouldn’t those who facilitate these crimes be held accountable?
TL;DR: To reiterate and rephrase my question, why should those who intentionally make and sell guns for the implied purpose of killing people not be held accountable when those guns are then used to do exactly what they were designed to do?
Instead of the alternative? Holding people responsible for how they use a tool? I’m very pro common sense gun law. But I also recognise that education and training (throughout a lifetime, not just a one and done) makes more sense and does more good. What is the supposed outcome of holding gun manufacturers accountable? What does that look like? They get fined? Who in that organisation takes the criminal charge in a murder where A Smith and Wesson was used? The CEO? The engineering team?
If you’d said you want to dismantle gun lobbies? I would agree. If you had said you wanted to mandate background checks, licensing, and mandatory 2-3 year training for each class of firearm on the market, I’d agree. But I have a lot of questions about who would be to blame in what amounts to a faceless capitalist organisation. What if to combat this trend they decided to hire someone specific to the role of taking any legal blame in the event they were sued or criminally charged? Could they hire a death row inmate to be that person?
I would support this if there was evidence that manufacturers were knowingly (or purposefully not doing due diligence) selling to distributors who weren’t following the rules or were somehow pressuring distributors to bend the rules to sell more (conspiracy). Otherwise its really on the distributors to be doing background checks, adhering to waiting periods, and using proper discretion. If we want less guns around then there need to be legal limits on sales and ownership, and those limits need to be enforced.
It’s the Big Tobacco argument, they knew their products were deadly but ignored it. Gun Manufacturers know their products are deadly but they ignore it.
No, this isn’t the same. The tobacco companies hid data that showed how unhealthy their products were because if people were aware they might not buy the product. People bought tobacco products for enjoyment.
Everyone knows guns can be deadly. Hell, it’s actually a selling point. No one is hiding that information. But you can use a gun in a legal way or an illegal way. It’s very different.
It’s been suggested that the gun lobby is actively hiding data on how bad their products are to health
While not a 1-to-1 comparison, I think it’s relevant to compare them to Tobacco.
I firmly disagree. I’m not a fan of guns (or tobacco), but these just aren’t analogous situations. The number of people who think a gun can’t be lethal when you point it at someone’s head is essentially zero, but for years they talked about the health benefits of smoking. And “the gun lobby” isn’t the same as “gun manufacturers” the way that the tobacco lobby was basically completely funded by tobacco companies.
Yes, there are a bunch of people who don’t want us to be able to study how many gun deaths there are a year, but it’s not because they don’t want us to know if guns pose a health risk or not. It’s just a different situation.
In my opinion, the difference isn’t enough to invalidate the comparison. Same goes for the gun lobby being co-mingled with weapons manufacturers. Compare the NRA from the 70s to the NRA from the 90s and today. It went from a safety organization to an organization only caring about selling more weapons. I lived in a NRA household growing up, and their literature no matter who was President was constant fear mongering over not being able to have or buy more weapons, implying everyone should buy buy buy.
And apparently a lot of NRA funding as part of that transition came from Russia, which is honestly part of my point. The gun lobby doesn’t seem to be primarily manufacturers, so holding them responsible for the horrific gun death rate in this country doesn’t make sense to me.
Everyone knows guns are deadly. Not everyone knew tobacco was. Tobacco companies knew and withheld that information and marketed their products as safe.
So gun Manufacturers advertise they murder more innocent people than any other device? I don’t remember that ad.
That’s a very fair point. Ideally, firearms shouldn’t be sold to those who would use them illegally in the first place.
It makes a lot more sense to require insurance, like a vehicle.
How about a license to express your other constitutional rights?
A speech license?
What about the manufacturers of knives, screwdrivers, automobiles, hammers? Yes, firearms are made to be used to kill, where the others aren’t, but the intention to kill comes from the user.
The manufacturer is making a tool with the intention of killing.
You have a point. But you are skipping a road of reasoning here.
Technically the manufacturer is making a tool with the intention of firing a projectile at high velocity and that projectile can and usually is used as a weapon.
What is the intention of designing something capable of firing a projectile at high velocity?
Seriously, this argument is so stupid. Let me try.
Im a manufacturer that cuts wood at a specific size with the intention to use it as a door. It can and usually is used as a door, but doesn’t have to be.
It is a weapon. That is the intention of the tool.
A spade has the purpose of digging, just as the gun has the purpose of killing.
The vast majority of ar15 rifles sold will never kill anything. Lots of guns are really only ever used for target shooting.
I’m not arguing about the proportion of guns that kill things or not.
I’m merely stating that the purpose of a gun, is to kill. Otherwise, they wouldn’t.
Target practice, is practicing to kill.
I’m not American, I don’t need to abide by your bullshit constitution.
I’m merely stating that the purpose of a gun, is to kill. Otherwise, they wouldn’t.
Corollary: Vehicles were not designed to kill, so they don’t.
Fantastic! We just solved highway safety!
Are you this shallow and unlearned or are you being silly?
The car has a number of safety mechanisms to prevent death. A gun does too - but, that is to prevent it’s intended use.
The car is regulated to prevent death. Although, not nearly enough. We have licences, registration, regular maintenance and checks. That are enforced with fines, usually.
The car is designed to move people and things from point a to point b. That is it’s function. There is a side effect of that function, that it can kill people.
If the cars manufacturer had installed a spiked bullbar in a line of new cars. I think it would be fair for litigation to be directed at that manufacturer to determine the function of that bullbar. Because it seems like the intention is to make it easy for people to kill people.
The guns function is to kill. Plain and simple. The manufacturer has the intention to make tools to kill.
The cars function is to drive. Plain and simple. The manufacturer has the intention to move people and things around.
Many of them are produced with the intention of killing animals (hunting) not people. Personally I don’t approve of people buying full automatic assault weapons and such but hunting rifles and whatnot I don’t have a problem with.
Personally I’m a proponent of the Canadian system where you actually need to be approved and pass a test and be licensed to own a weapon with the ability to lose said license if you abuse it. It’s no where near perfect but miles better than letting anyone pick up a weapon at the local Walmart.
Nobody can buy automatic weapons. Haven’t been able to since 1986. I would recommend a class in firearms so you actually know what you’re talking about, strengthening your argument. Currently as it stands, you are just repeating the right buzzwords without being close to correct.
Rich people can very easily buy automatic weapons in most places in the US. You just usually need about 15 to 20 thousand dollars to get one in an auction or gun store. There really isn’t anything holding anybody back besides money and their arrest record.
This also depends on the particular states’ laws about them. In a few states they are completely banned, others have extra restrictions.
In my particular state, people have them at the shooting range all of the time. You can even rent them at most ranges. You can aquire them easily if you get a FFL, and a lot of gun people seem to go that route.
Yup.
I’m not American. This has been standard procedure for the 3 countries I call home. You need a gun licence - and it’s pretty stringently assessed.
I don’t need to abide by American constitutional bullshit. There is no tap dancing from me.
Arms manufacturers would probably argue that guns are intended to be deterrent. And they shouldn’t be held liable that the cops keep executing unarmed suspects with them.
Can’t hurt their profit margins, of course they would say that.
And the scissors!! Also forks!
Don’t forget pencils!
A firearm is a device with limited applicability. Its one purpose is to harm things.
If it was designed to unscrew things then it’d be a screwdriver. But it’s not. It’s a gun. It’s for shooting things dead. It’s one purpose is patently obvious and any attempt to say “but you don’t have to shoot things with it” should be met with the derision it deserves.
So you’d like to wholesale ban hunting? Is that your position?
I think most urban liberals would ban hunting given the opportunity, but have enough self awareness to realize that’s an untenable position.
Urban liberal hunter here!
Obviously my city has completely banned hunting and I travel 40 miles away to do my hunting…but that situation is now changing.
After years/decades of no hunting, deer over population and the problems that go with it have gotten to a point where the city is testing out a pilot program this fall/winter to allow a small group of archery hunters to hunt a limited amount of deer in the city parks on (I think) two set days where the parks will be closed to other humans through the day.
Assuming the program sees participation and effective results, the intention is to expand it slowly to both increase the number of tags issued as well as have a few more days and locations in the program.
I think a part of this is the small but growing shift among urban liberals from taking positions based on points without context to having more nuanced approaches based on overall world view.
For example: rather than just being “anti gun and anti hunting”, I think people are starting to go beyond that and think about why they’re against hunting. For a lot of people, it’s because they’re pro animal. They like seeing the deer and don’t want to see them hurt. Unfortunately, in our urban (and suburban, and in many cases even rural environments) we have already upset the natural balance, to the point that whitetail deer have no natural predators where they live. Without this pressure they become over populated, leading to increased vehicle accidents, disease, and over browsing in their habitats which leads to even more negative consequences and effects.
So if they like the deer, presumably they want a healthy, happy, balanced population. And if they want that, in an urban environment, that means management. If the population is unsustainably high, it is going to come down, one way or another. At that point, it’s a choice between "would you rather these deer die due to disease, starvation, and dangerous vehicle collisions, all the while wiping out new growth in forests, negatively impacting other species and the health of the ecosystem? Or would you prefer the relatively quick, clean, ethical harvest of hunters, and not only respect the animals in life but also remove them from the population in a way that feeds people natural food that is locally sourced, free range, not full of hormones, and whose harvest actually has a net positive impact on the environment it came from?
And I feel like as “liberals”, for whatever that term may mean to people, get more and more into things like home brewing, fishing, foraging, raising chickens, farm to table, etc., the more hope there is that hunting won’t be looked at in such a negative light.
A weapon is a tool, killing things is the job that tool was designed to do. No one is arguing different, get your strawman out of here.
Killing things isn’t always immoral or illegal, either. I can hunt wild boar or keep the prairie dog population in check with an AR-15 as long as I have the appropriate licensing and am abiding laws regarding location, etc.
Then there’s the obvious home defense scenario which is unlikely but happens more often than you’d think, the stories just don’t go past local news.
Right, but the duty of care changes based on the risks.
Yeah, last I checked harming things is not illegal in all circumstances.
Hunting, self defense, in some cases defense of property or of others.
So you are 100% correct, their purpose is to harm things. Some do so efficiently enough to kill them, too. None of this is inherently illegal, so there’s no issue with them being on sale or legal.
How about camera manufacturers? If someone uses a Nikon camera to create CSAM (“child porn”), should the Nikon company be liable to the victims? Cameras are made, by design, to produce images of what’s in front of them, even if that is a child being sexually abused. There have been proposals to require digital cameras to spy on their users to ensure that illegal images can be more easily tracked. If a camera manufacturer refuses to do this, citing “privacy” or “freedom of expression”, should the victims of CSAM be able to hold that manufacturer liable?
Some countries, such as the Soviet Union, have restricted the ownership and use of printing equipment, including photocopiers, to deter their use to spread illegal capitalist propaganda. Should photocopier manufacturers be held liable for illegal material that a user photocopies?
Or, sticking to the gun example — How about 3D printer manufacturers? 3D printers can be used to create illegal guns. If you use a 3D printer to illegally create a gun, should the 3D printer manufacturer be held liable?
Alternately, we could stick to considering people liable for the choices that they themselves make, and not for merely creating the opportunity for bad users to make bad choices.
Car manufacturers aren’t liable for every incident of drunk driving or every robbery getaway — but they are liable for defects in a car that cause it to go off accidentally. Similarly, gun manufacturers should be held responsible to ensure that guns work properly and do not go off accidentally, e.g. if a loaded gun is dropped.
We don’t blame beer manufacturers for drunk drivers, I can see the argument being similar. But guns are meant to kill by design. It is slightly different if there was an actual reason to be making them, like cameras, then I would say we do not need to hold the comapanies responsible. But these are made exclusively for death, which i think should be held to different standards than “useful” things
Many objects are meant to kill by design. Daggers are frankly entirely useless as a knife except stabbing people but would you sue a company for making one? Even then if daggers were banned people would just use kitchen knives.
The bullet that kills the most people in the US is actually the scrappy little .22 LR, a very weak cartridge. If all guns were banned a knife or a variety of other things isn’t much less lethal.
When was the last time someone killed hundreds of people with a knife??
So we will only hold him manufacturers liable when a single actor with a single weapon kills hundreds of people?
I’m just pointing out there is a massive difference between a stabbing weapon and a long range automatic/semi auto weapon
I feel like the analogy of the camera would be more valid if Nikon designed a camera that was specifically designed to cater to the needs of child molesters.
Almost all guns are designed as weapons first and foremost. That’s it.
Fencing is a sport that allows people to duel each other. The foils are items of sports equipment - they have specifically been designed to not be lethal.
Guns, on the other hand, are not items of sports equipment. They are weapons that some people use for sport.
In the US, gun companies are quite happy to produce these for supply to the untrained, unregulated masses. And actively promote this as totally normal. I’d say they hold some of the blame.
There’s an entire field of shooting sports. The Olympics has shootings events. There’s guns made specifically for specific competitions like PRS & IPSC.
When manufacturers do market guns for the purposes of broadly shooting at other humans it’s more specifically the self defense market. There’s a difference between making a product for self defense and making firearms for drive by shootings.
Additionally you have companies in the industry who specifically created entirely new branches just for training. Here’s a link to Sig Sauer’s training side.
The core issues are not that individuals have the capacity to do ill but the motivation and desire. To meaningfully impact homicides you need to first understand the different motivations behind them and change the system that created poor circumstances.
For example tackling drug related gang violence by changing the laws on drugs so as to not create room in our societies for criminal organizations structured around their illicit trade.
Sure if a hunting rifle was used to kill someone then the manufacturer wouldn’t be liable. Killing people isn’t the primary purpose of that kind of firearm.
But a gun that’s primary purpose is to kill people and is marketed as such? Yeah they should be liable for that.
If they are marketing guns for home defense and not making purchaser of the firearm aware that they’re statistically more likely to kill themselves or a family member than ever need the gun for a burglar, that seems like negligent behavior to me.
Also if they’re marketing anything other than a shotgun for home defense they are creating a dangerous situation unnecessarily. Suggesting someone should fire a weapon which has bullets that can penetrate through the drywall inside a house while the person firing is scared leads to all kinds of foreseeable life threatening scenarios. Shotguns exist, they would be better suited for this (extremely rare) scenario. If they are marketing anything other than a shotgun for home defense they are needlessly putting people’s lives in danger.
If people approach this logically (without the standard gun nut wackiness) then yeah there’s a lot of negligence going on, possibly gross negligence.
I don’t know which kind of shotgun loading you have in mind but sufficiently effective shotgun loadings (read not bird shot) will 100% penetrate dry wall several times before reaching a not fatal velocity. High mass projectiles maintain course better when flying through materials like dry wall.
A cartridge like .223 which relies on velocity, instead of mass, tends to penetrate walls the least. This is because upon it’s first impact it begins to destabilize, resulting in a faster loss of velocity.
Those are good points, but let’s use an example of companies being held liable for consumer behavior: drink companies being held liable for litter from their products. In some places, companies like Coke will receive fines for their products being found as litter, to prevent the use of single use plastics. In a system where the consumer has no choice about how their products are received, it becomes a fair method of harm reduction to penalize companies. The individual is responsible for harming the planet, yes, but the company also shares part of the blame for manufacturing products that are designed to be thrown away.
Different example: car manufacturers aren’t liable for drunk drivers, but bartenders can be found liable. Bars and bartenders can be held liable for accidents involving drunk drivers, if they came from a bar. I wouldn’t change that for anything, even if there’s a perceived “unfairness”.
It’s good that you bring up design flaws and manufacturing errors, because currently firearms manufacturers are immune to product recalls. There are pistols out there from Sig Sauer that are capable of accidental discharge, even with the safety on. To my knowledge it’s still manufactured and hasn’t been recalled. The Consumer Protection Agency can politely ask for a voluntary recall, but current laws mean that the government can’t force a recall on faulty weapons. This needs to change.
I don’t have any ideas on how to apply the littering concept to weapons manufacturers, but I think we should figure it out to prevent people from dying. We should also make guns recallable.
Sig Sauer that are capable of accidental discharge, even with the safety on. To my knowledge it’s still manufactured and hasn’t been recalled.
If you’re talking about the P320, Sig changed their manufacturing and offered to repair/replace any firearms that were made with the faulty trigger, as identified by serial number. I personally helped a ton of customers send their guns back to Sig to get this fixed. This happened over well over 5 years ago. While it wasn’t a federally mandated recall, it was a voluntary fix by Sig, similar to how a ton of vehicle recalls work.
Thanks for those extra details. I’m not a gun enthusiast anymore, so I didn’t know that the design flaw was fixed. However, from what I remember about that situation, that information was very difficult to find and was made worse because it wasn’t a voluntary recall. They essentially said “yea, this is a problem. We’ll fix it, but we didn’t do anything wrong”. You did a great service by filling in the gaps left by Sig, but it should have been loudly broadcasted with a recall.
It was pretty cut and dry at the time if I remember correctly. It wasn’t a difficult process, nor was the information difficult to find. Again, if I’m remembering right, it was right on their website. It was a number of years ago though, so I could definitely be remembering it wrong. I worked at a gun store / shooting range at the time and remember it being a big deal and we had customers asking US about sending their guns in for repair. So it was widely known they were doing fixes.
The littering concept is called public nuisance.
Happy to see some good replies here. Yes, it would mean that we’d need to hold car makes responsible for DUIs, Cutco responsible for knife attacks, even baseball bat manufacturers for violent attacks done with baseball bats.
It could also hold companies responsible even if they aren’t actively manufacturing the dangerous item anymore; for example, let’s say that Smith & Wesson stops manufacturing guns. Their guns will still be out in the hands of folks, and they will still be held accountable for the violence.
Edit: To respond to this:
Guns were made, by design, to be effective and efficient at the ending of human lives. Using the firearms in the way they were designed to be used is the primary difference for me
At a very basic level, guns are designed to, I would argue, send a bullet somewhere. If the gun reliably fails to do so (i.e. it jams constantly), or inappropriately deploys the bullet (i.e. it explodes in your face, shoots backwards at the shooter, or is wildly inaccurate), then I could see why the manufacturer could be held responsible, since the product isn’t doing what it’s supposed to do.
What I don’t like about this argument is it feels like the government trying to pass off their own responsibility to someone else. Like, if guns are so dangerous in purpose that manufacturers should be fined for shootings, then government officials should just be regulating gun ownership to begin with. Like, imagine if instead of criminalizing tobacco because of its dangerous health effects, the government said that anytime a person is caught smoking it tobacco companies get fined. At that point you may as well just outlaw the company itself. Which is fine. I have no problem outlawing gun manufacturing. But this is just an unnecessarily roundabout way of doing that. What are we actually accomplishing if we allow people to be shot and then take action and milk money out of the situation? A responsible government isn’t trying to point fingers after a tragedy like a mass shooting and they certainly aren’t trying to make money off of it. No, a good government takes the necessary direct steps to prevent those tragedies from happening again, especially if it’s a common occurrence. No need to dance around a solution instead of tackling it head on.
killing is seen as required to some extent, otherwise we wouldnt have any armies, so making weapons shouldnt be a crime by itself. still most legislations around the world limit what kind of firearms one can manufacture, and how they can be distributed. if i made a nuke and sold it to you, and then ud detonate it in the atlantic, both of us would probably go to jail on various weapons of mass destruction charges, even though i havent nuked nobody.
You’d be charged because you made and distributed a weapon that is an unregistered explosive device - AKA a bomb.
Everyone gets hung up on guns for killing. I’ve shot tens of thousands of rounds and haven’t killed a thing because I shoot competitively. It’s like Zen Buddhists who shoot the bow and arrow, another weapon designed to kill. It is an exercise of mind and body.
What if I put a serial number on it and a warning that detonating this thermonuclear device may cause harm and is thus not advised?
If any other “hobby” were killing people in the same numbers as guns, it would be banned immediately. Bows and arrows aren’t killing large groups of people in seconds. They aren’t killing children. They aren’t involved in accidental firings and suicides.
It doesn’t matter what your “mind and body” wants if it means others die in vast quantities. Your hobby isn’t worth more than people’s lives, children’s lives.
https://hobbycents.com/hobby-guides/driving-hobby-guide/
Cars kill in the same numbers are guns, and are a hobby… just saying
Many more people who would prefer to teleport to a destination than drive.
It’s not a hobby for most drivers.
I’d double down and say that maybe we shouldn’t be driving cars. There are other methods of moving from point a to point b.
This position isn’t exactly practical, yet, but it is consistent.
For what it’s worth I wouldn’t mind banning cars but keeping guns.
Having guns keeps the working man having power.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Four_boxes_of_liberty
There are four boxes to be used in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, and cartridge. Please use in that order.
The “cartridge” option is more important than almost anything else. Besides jury boxes and ballot boxes.
It’s a losing effort.
If they argue that guns are exceptional because they’re a weapon, you counter with bows and arrows and knives, they respond with the ease and efficiency of the gun.
If they start with the ease and efficiency angle, you counter with cars, and then it’s all about the base design being a weapon.
For these people it’s multiple factors. First of all, it’s both, guns are weapons, and they democratize lethal force. For these people, that’s enough for them to absolve murderers of some of their guilt, to be shifted to the manufacturer. It’s not any one factor, it’s several combined, so that guns occupy the unique intersection of factors they’ve decided matters…
But ultimately, at the end of the day, the biggest driving factor behind it is, “I don’t own or use guns, so I’m okay with banning, or effectively banning, something that I won’t miss at all, regardless of whether it’ll do any good. It’ll make me feel better, so practicality, or others who may be negatively impacted, don’t matter.” Their feelings overrule legal precedence, rule of law, protected freedoms, practical arguments, views and practices of others, and everything else that might get in the way of making them feel better.
Some very good points, and well written
I use guns to shoot paper. Your argument for what guns are created for is flawed. My gun is not created for the ending of human lives.
My gun was made to end paper from being completely without holes.
Are you saying that my use of the gun is wrong? Or am I allowed to have a gun that is not used for killing?
-Signed a bleeding heart lefty with a gun
so you’d be ok with us limiting the utility item to the task required? IE, it should be able to penetrate paper? cuz we can make that happen and still get rid of the human killing ones.
How do you do " can make that happen and still get rid of"
Explain please.
So you’d be fine with a hand-pump air pistol, then.
Edit: oh, he’d not. There goes that argument. Too bad he’s too much of a coward to even reply.
In a similar vein, what about the opposite - something created for one purpose but used for another? Cars are made to transport people from A to B, but people have used them as weapons to kill
I have no opinion on you owning a firearm, or using it for any purpose outside of the topic question. I think it’s great that you and many people can use guns for fun and as a hobby.
My question is specifically about the accountability of the manufacturers for the use of their guns as weapons in crimes.
Because I have the right to get a manufacturer that is not liable. Much like my ability to get a car is based on the fact that auto manufacturers not liable My ability to get a gun is absolutely reliant upon gun manufacturers not being liable.
You are not participating in a good faith discussion if you don’t acknowledge that making guns manufacturers liable will remove my choice to shoot paper.
You’re proposal will affect me, at least if you’re arguing in good faith.
I apologize if I am coming across in poor faith. I do not intend to argue, but to understand. I appreciate your discussion, and I hope we both learn more about other people’s beliefs.
I will note that I made no proposal of anything. Holding manufacturers accountable doesn’t necessarily mean we’d need to eliminate their ability to make and sell guns. I’m not even sure what making them accountable could, or would, look like. I was more curious as to what people thought about the idea of reviewing the responsibility of the use of guns to include those who make them.
At the moment, I read news articles everyday about the misuse of firearms. Children shooting each other. Criminals murdering people. Ignorant, though innocent, people playing with guns and accidentally killing others. In all cases, I see arguments of who to blame. I’ve always been confused why the manufacturers are never considered as a party worthy of blame. I was curious why that was the case, and the many answers throughout this thread have been very enlightening. If nothing else, this issue is clearly far more complicated than I first anticipated.
I have the right to get a manufacturer that is not liable
Absolutely not. Gun ownership is not a positive right. The state is not required to subsidize ownership of guns to allow it. You could argue that the state can’t make it prohibitive punitively, but you can’t argue that the costs of externalities are punitive.
If firearms manufacturers are to be held liable, what would be the reasoning to also not hold vehicle manufacturers liable in the use of their product in criminal acts?
Vehicles are probably used in just as many crimes as guns are, I imagine, with vehicular manslaughter, running vehicles through protests and crowds, etc.
I can’t see a logical reason to target one specific product over others when there are legitimate uses for them (i.e. hunting).
Wait until you find out about fiat currency. Shit has been used in crime since before it was invented.
Yeah, all those assault rifles and pistols that were designed for hunting.
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Pistols can absolutely be used to hunt small game. Calibers like .22 are used for rabbit and squirrel hunting all the time.
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An assault rifle is one that is fully automatic, while you can get one, it costs quite the sum in licensing fees and background investigations. The weapons used in active shootings are semi automatic rifles, not military grade assault rifles.
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It’s very simple and logical. Guns only have one primary purpose and that is to kill other people.
The primary purpose of a car is not to kill other people.
So there is really no comparison between the two.
The only people that don’t understand this are morons who have no concept of utility.
I think the difference is one was designed to transport people and the other was designed to kill something.
Exactly. What are they expecting people to use them for? It’s not as if they have any uses other than destruction, either of property or of life.
Uh, sports, hunting, personal defense, lol
Sports
Assuming you mean clay pigeon shooting and the like, you’re still destroying the clay pigeons.
Hunting
Do I really have to explain how this one destroys things?
Personal defense
The only two ways I can think of using a gun to defend yourself would be harming your attacker or threatening them with harm. “Destruction” doesn’t wholly apply here, but it’s still harmful or at least unpleasant.
lol
removed by mod
Did you really just compare eating to shooting a gun?
Yea, the logic is pretty stupid, huh?
Why shouldn’t Microsoft be held accountable for everything illegal people do on Windows? Why shouldn’t pharmacists be held responsible for prescription drug abuse? Why shouldn’t a social media website be held accountable for users infringing copyright? If something is used illegally and the person who made it is held accountable, that doesn’t really make sense even if you dislike the thing. For example, I hate YouTube, but it doesn’t make sense for them to be held accountable for users posting copyright infringing content.
In the US at least, you cannot sue manufacturers of legal products unless there is defect or negligence. Firearms are legal products and there are many legal uses of them in the US.
If the product is defective in someway such as it discharges in a manner that isn’t intended, they’d have to recall that product or be subject to liability. They are not liable for the deliberate misuse of their otherwise legal product, that’s on the end user.
That’s only partially true. There two other categoried of liability: unreasonably dangerous activities and inherently dangerous activities.
Very briefly in the United States gun makers or on the verge of being held liable under these theories of liability. They are strict liability. It whatever resulted in gun makers having a duty to vet end purchasers, the idea being that selling a gun to any random person that wants one is unreasonably dangerous and or inherently dangerous. These are theories of strict civil lability, meaning that any damage flowing from the conduct is actionable.
They still apply to explosives makers as well as to the use and transport of explosives.
The United States Congress shut it down as to gun makers with a law absolving them for such liability.
Gun makers may still be liable under two additional theories, one being negligent and trustment and the other being negligent advertising.
I understand what the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms is. Literally no gun manufacturer is conducting initial sales to “any random person” due to the extremely strict laws governing FFLs. They would be committing federal crimes if they did that.
Well no, some are, smaller ones. To your point though, I’m suggesting that gun makers should either vet the consumers for the gun stores, or ensure the gun stores are doing a proper vet, and that not doing so is culpable negligence.
I base this mainly on two things: the burden this would impose on gun makers is minimal, and the nature of sort of injuries that result from being negligence here is catastrophic. The potential for such serious harm justifies the burden.
They could literally do a Google search for the buyer’s name and be better off than we are right now, where manufacturers literally do nothing, except stick communities and families with the cost of their products. Car insurers do it. Banks do it. Doctors do it. They check their customers background before doing business.
Because the manufacturer didn’t use the gun in a crime. If anything, the only person who could be responsible is the seller of the firearms, and even then it’s unlikely that they could be sued as, again, their not the ones who used the gun in a crime, unless that crime is selling to a minor or someone who isn’t allowed to own a gun.
Prefacing with my context here: I’m not a gun supporter. I’m also not an anti-gun advocate. But I wouldn’t lose any sleep over a revocation or heavy restriction on the 2nd amendment.
That being said, I would not in any way support a law that held weapons manufacturers legally liable for the actions of their customers using their products without at least one of the following three factors being true:
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The product, in itself, has no legitimate purpose or function other than one that is harmful to its user, illegal, or infringes upon the rights of others. (I agree guns are inherently destructive and primarily intended to end the life of a person or creature, but there are legitimate and legal situations where such destruction is legal and even necessary. Self defense and hunting being the primary legitimate uses, marksmanship a secondary one.)
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The manufacturer is verifiably and willfully propogating non-legitimate uses of their product in a way that is inherently harmful to its user, illegal, or infringes upon the rights of others.
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The manufacturer is grossly negligent in their business practices or sales in a way that they could directly have prevented with reasonable due diligence that results in the use of their product that is inherently harmful to its user, illegal, or infringes upon the rights of others.
The reason I think that this should be the case is that nobody should be held to account for actions that they did not take, are not promoting and could not have reasonably expected or prevented on a case by case basis. Just to illustrate the problem with holding the manufacturer responsible with a blanket liability, simply due to their production of a product with which a crime was committed, the buck wouldn’t stop at the gun manufacturer. The gun companies buy products from vendors to produce their products and support their factories. Those vendors knowingly sell to the gun manufacturers. Would they not also be responsible to the ultimate products that were used in a crime? Not just the companies that sell their metals and hardware used in the gun assembly, but their tools, their work equipment, their consumables like their vending machines and water. All of those things play a part in the production of guns. Government employment grants and subsidies for business also mean that the US, state and local governments are in part responsible for their production as well. And we as tax payers and voters ultimately are responsible as well then.
No, legal liability is and always should be a matter of willful actions and/or gross negligence. Something like a manufacturer knowingly and intentionally selling directly/indirectly to a criminal organization/cartel. Or them not taking their due diligence to make sure that their client is a reputable retailer, not, in fact, a criminal organization or supplying one. Or running ads that seem to be inducing people to buy their guns to be used for armed robbery, intimidation or murder. All of those things are and/or should be criminal and they should be legally liable as such. But simply producing a weapon is not ultimately enough to hold them responsible for any eventual criminal use of that weapon.
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Firstly, I hate guns and wish they were far more tightly controlled.
But even I don’t think holding manufacturers responsible for crimes is a good way to go about that. Guns do have legitimate uses.
Should we hold auto manufacturers responsible for a pedestrian who’s hit by a drunk driver? How about we put the workers who built the road in jail, too.
This kind of overreaching liability litigation is why we can’t have quite a lot of good things in this country anymore. We can’t babyproof every aspect of our society.
