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?
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
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.
Theirs 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.
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.
And the scissors!! Also forks!
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.
The vast majority of ar15 rifles sold will never kill anything. Lots of guns are really only ever used for target shooting.
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.
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.
“Spoons made me fat”
Sorry for the low effort reply, but I look at it as simple as that. People often want to find anything other than themselves to blame for their poor choices. Guns may make it easier to make poor choices (arguable), but it’s also hard to eat soup with a butter knife.Are you also against the requirement of driving licenses?
Do we charge car companies when their vehicles are used to run someone over?
Cars are not primarily designed for running over people. And despite that, they’re regulated more than guns.
Fair point, I think that does highlight an issue with how they are sometimes marketed. If Chevy’s next truck had a front end specifically designed to mow people down and they had a commercial demonstrating its effectiveness in a crowd, I think people would freak out; even the most unreasonable would probably say “WTF Chevy?” A person could make the argument that guns aren’t primarily designed with harming others even with self-defense in mind, but for hunting, but I think that argument conveniently ignores the fact that some gun owners may have never even hunted for their food and they own one simply to protect themselves against someone who doesn’t care whether the gun they own and wield with the intent to harm or commit a crime is legal or not.
Not exactly, it’s an interesting point, but to be fair I don’t think I have a strong opinion one way or another on that topic. I think licensing a driver assumes they are a little more aware of the consequences of their actions behind the wheel and they are well trained at dealing with potentially dangerous machinery (lol, reality and expectations don’t always align), but that’s an assumption, people do dumb/negligent things in cars constantly and I’m afraid the threat of losing their license over it doesn’t always (or probably even mostly) work to deter a person who intends to use it as a weapon and/or has already lost sight of the other consequences. When someone decides to use that machine as a weapon it rarely makes sense (at least to me) to ask why didn’t the manufacturer do more to prevent this? That said, it is an interesting idea, in theory at least, treating gun ownership the same way as car ownership with licensing and insurance, a license creates some additional legal liability to hold someone accountable for their actions, but it would still be about personal responsibility not the auto maker. I also don’t think a lot of gun owners want to budge on their current rights because they fear the slippery slope effect of over-regulation and asking the very people who the 2nd amendment is meant to keep in check to write the rules may only benefit them. In the end, my opinion is not that America has a gun problem, it has a mental health problem and a predatory for-profit prison system that creates a revolving door that unfairly targets people of certain backgrounds or social status. Gun control in itself may just be another form of Problem Reaction Solution (Create or allow a problem, wait for the reaction, offer a solution that benefits one side over another that wouldn’t have otherwise been appealing without the initial problem), that and I wonder if the gun debate often gets intentionally steered in circles or nonsensical directions as a form of bread and circus to keep us ignorant to the actual root cause, which is sometimes people do bad things regardless of the consequences. Remember, to keep the people with the pitchforks busy, all you have to do is convince them the people with the torches want to take their pitchforks away, and they’ll never come for the rulers. I rarely take part in these debates because I don’t pretend to have enough knowledge on the subject to create a strong enough argument for either side, but I am glad people are at least discussing these ideas, just the same as I’d be glad to see (or be) a good guy with a gun when threatened by a bad guy with a gun.
Weird comparison, specially when many people literally want the existence of actual gun licenses (with education and examination built into it like driving does).
You can legally kill someone in a self defense situation so just because guns are designed to kill doesn’t make them different from another product that can be used illegally.
Cars can be used to kill people illegally and we don’t hold the manufacturer responsible.
IMO holding manufacturers responsible would just lead to a legal mess and a waste of court time/resources. I’d rather have better background checks, and other limits on gun purchases.
I tentatively agree with you. You mention how this would be difficult and messy in our present legal system, and I guess I’m trying to consider what an alternative legal system might do to address the problem of gun violence without the “mess.” In a “cleaner” legal landscape, it might be desirable to nip the problem in the bud (restrict manufacturing), but we have the system we have and we need to work within it, I guess.
The main difference is that guns are tools designed specifically for killing.
But as the person said, it’s legal to kill a person in self defense. If it’s legal to do something, and a company give you a tool to do that legal thing, why should the company be responsible if you use that tool to do something illegal? If it was illegal to even have a gun, it might make sense to hold manufacturers responsible, it it isn’t illegal to have or use them in some situations.
The sticky part is that killing isn’t just not always inherently legal, but is usually not.
Killing? True. Shots fired? Probably not true.
To me, philosophically, it doesn’t matter what the percentage is though. Unless we say it’s illegal to have the gun, it makes no sense to hold the gun manufacturers responsible for gun deaths. What are they doing to make people use their legal device in an illegal way?
Laws are increasingly meaningless when we’re discussing morality.
Yeah, and to a certain extent that’s appropriate. Legislating morality is problematic because there’s so much subjectivity.
Absolutely! And it can certainly help when there’s a clear, objective delineation between devices designed specifically for killing, and those that are not.
I’m heading down to the hammer range to practice hitting nails. Listening to gun nuts talk about the use case for guns is ridiculous. It is actually nice to see a few people in this thread acknowledging what a guns primary purpose is.
Now reread the first sentence of the person you replied to.
Now reread the entire rest of the comment.
Car manufacturers are held responsible, have you not seen the latest airbag lawsuit?
That is more analogous to if firearms were misfiring and killing their users. Then the manufacturers of the firearms should be held responsible.
I’d say it’s similar in how they advertise. Gun Manufacturers should be banned from advertising and marketing their products.
we could make it very simple and get rid of them as other more mature countries have. you know, the ones that dont have mass shootings of children constantly and arent wondering what to do about all the guns… those places.
3/4 states would need to ratify an amendment repealing the 2nd amendment. I can’t imagine any amendment being ratified in my lifetime let alone one repealing the 2nd amendment.
I’d rather start with legislation that has majority support and a realistic chance of passing.
The 2nd Amendment doesn’t give citizens the right to bare arms, it gives States the right to have militias or what is the National Guard today. Any uncompromised Judge would agree with that.
I mean, sure, if you ignore 200 years of judicial precedent and radically reimagine the definition of the 2nd amendment.
So instead of ignoring reality, how about we push laws that severely restrict gun ownership as that actually has a chance of passing and being upheld and maybe some new precedent gets set that allows more, similar laws to further reign things in
No. We’d just need to get rid of the ridiculous interpretation that half of the 2nd amendment text doesn’t matter. Well regulated militia doesn’t mean any Tom, Dick or Harry.
Probably more doable but doubtful with the current Supreme Court.
Yes it does.
You simply do not understand what “well regulated” means.
I would argue that it’s currently impossible, or at least extremely difficult, to remove the civilian firearms from the United States. If I had a magic spell that could make all the guns vanish at once, I’d cast it in a heartbeat. Unfortunately, there are so many firearms already in the US that it’d be absurd to expect all (or even most) people to voluntarily surrender them. The situation is made all the worse because of a minority of criminals and capitalists who would no doubt seek to profit off of a seizure or surrender scheme.
Hope, then, seems to lie with focusing on a healthier, happier future. An America where less people are forced into crime, and where profit for profit’s sake is frowned upon, sounds ideal.
we don’t need to do that. we just need to restrict stuff like 50 round magazines.
a lot hard to kill 50 people if your gun only holds 5 bullets.
We shouldn’t even be talking about how easy it is to kill 50 people.
It’s like saying “Yeah, the Head Chopper 2000 can cut off 3 heads at once but at least it isn’t the Head Chopper 3000. That one can do 10!”
A reload takes about 3 seconds.
The vast majority of firearms deaths have not used high capacity mags.
This is just the typical uninformed screaming.
wtf are you talking about
car manufactures are legally accountable to meet minimum safety standards for new vehicles. they have been sued over it.
Gun manufacturers are also legally accountable to meet minimum safety standards for new guns. And they have been successfully sued when they have not met them. Guns must not fire when dropped, for example.
Hostile but ok… I’m talking about intentionally misusing a car to kill people illegally like running someone over on purpose, not car safety standards like a defective airbag or something.
How does that have anything to do with the example of cats being used to commit crimes? No one said cars don’t have to meet safety standards. Guns have to meet safety standards too. The example was taking something that’s legal to have and using it to do something illegal. We don’t generally hold the manufacturers of those things liable for those crimes.
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.
That’s a very fair point. Ideally, firearms shouldn’t be sold to those who would use them illegally in the first place.
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.
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.
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.
For the same reason we don’t hold car manufacturers accountable for the use of cars in crimes. Or knife makers, or brick makers, or (insert item here). That being said, I’m very pro regulation, and I think guns should be treated exactly like cars. Insurance is required, licensee, that is required to be renewed every 5 years, training, and regular inspections are not too much to ask for a dead item that’s sole purpose is intended to kill.
Ok first, cars aren’t mentioned in the constitution but outside of that…
I can buy a car and use in off road or on private property and need none of that. I can even take it wherever else I want with it on a trailer.
So with what you’re saying I can make or buy a machine gun and supressor and as long as I don’t use it in public it’s totally legal without paying any mind to the government.
The constitution also doesn’t mention guns, just a passage about bear arms or something…
Imagine if this applies to other tools, like hammers.
Should the manufacturer of the 5 lbs MurderSpike SkullBleeder with night camouflage handle, extra inset bone crackers and instashatter blood flow accelerator head ®™, licensing games and movies to show people murdering each other gloriously with their hammer… be held responsible if by some off chance some person ends up murdering someone with it??? It’s ludicrous.
When a gun is used 100% correctly, it will kill.
When a hammer is used 100% incorrectly, it will kill.
Nope, lots of guns are used 100% correctly to shoot inanimate targets, in fact more often than they are used for killing anything. Target practice, competition shooting, recreational blasting, etc.
The example doesnt work
Hammers a made to hammer in nails, they can be used for other purposes but they are made for the one.
Guns are made to shoot a bullet into a animal/perso to seriously injure or kill. They have no other purpose it’s their exclusive use.
Edited: to include animals for the pedantic among us.
Guns are also made to hunt animals for food, so they’re not exclusively made to harm people. It’s all in the intent of the person with the gun.
No one is hunting deer with a glock though
No, but plenty of hikers carry handguns for safety. They’re lighter than a rifle, but have the same effect against anything smaller than a bear or wolf
Not with that attitude.
Handgun hunting is actually a thing
Guns’ original intention might’ve been to shoot people (and some are of course still designed with that in mind) but there are obviously millions of gun owners around the world that manage to use their guns without shooting people so it’s clearly not their exclusive use…
Okay, so do all bowmakers and swordsmiths now get charged for when people commit crimes with those?
Not necessarily a person. Just saying.
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.
Because it sets a precedent that has ludicrous outcomes where the manufacturers of any product that are used for wrong are liable for the damages caused by their use and suddenly nobody wants to manufacture screwdrivers any more. PC manufacturers are now responsible for the actions of hackers and so no more pc manufacturing, auto manufacturers are now responsible for vehicular homocides so no more auto manufacturers, etc, etc.
I agree with this, but if a screwdriver company advertised how well their new screwdriver could gouge out eyes they could be seen as encouraging it.
I think my hangup on the issue is a matter of intention and primary purpose. A car’s primary purpose is to transport. A screwdrivers primary purpose is to affix screws. A computer has a wide, unspecified set of applications such that there is no implied purpose outside of personal or economic enrichment. I do not believe that the manufacturers of these products should be held accountable for their products misuse.
However, I’m quite concerned about firearms being used for their primary purpose: killing people. To the manufacturers and legislators credit, as someone else mentioned in this thread, there are at least meticulous safety standards to greatly limit the likelihood of guns killing people OUTSIDE of the users’ intended targets.
Are you looking for an answer to a question, or are you looking for a debate?
At any rate, reducing the utility of an item to what it’s “lowest performance” should be to lower it’s ability to harm for non-intended uses is asinine. Who sets the limits? Does a knife need to be razor sharp? I can cut a lot of things with a dull knife and some time. It would pose less danger to you if all knives I had access to were purposefully dull. To prevent me from procuring an overly sharp knife, make the material strong enough to cut foods, but brittle enough to not be one overly sharp. Knives, after all, we’re made to stab, cut, and dissect a wide arrange of materials, flesh included. This specific design poses limitless danger to you, and needs to be considered when manufacturing these tools.
Guns are not majorly sold specifically to kill people, in the grand scheme of things. Hunting is probably the largest vector of volume gun sales in the US. How do you design a weapon that can be useful for hunting, but ineffective at killing a human? They all possess the innate ability to do so, but so does even the smallest pocket knife or kitchen knife.
I’m also a big gun control advocate, so I’m not defending anything I like. The failings of US gun control are squarely on the idea that everyone should possess a gun until they prove they shouldnt; it’s reactive policy. Active gun control would limit who can possess a gun from the start to those that will only use it for “appropriate” reasons.
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.
deleted by creator
You already answered your own question with the car analogy. Notwithstanding all the rest of it, guns are inherently dangerous. There’s no way to make them “safe,” like removing the points from lawn darts. Gun manufacturers would have a conga line of ambulance-chaser lawyers following them around 24/7 seeking a payday every time someone so much as scratched themselves with the rear sight while cocking their own pistol.
If you think American citizens like their guns, let me tell you this: The American government really, really, really likes their guns. They want to have all the guns and if they had their way you would have none. But the problem is, they buy all their guns from private manufacturers, just like us. If gun manufacturers were liable for what idiots did with their products (arguably including, but realistically probably not including the various police and governmental forces in the US) they’d all be bankrupt tomorrow. And then what? The cops and military would have to buy all their guns from some other country.
Arms production could theoretically be nationalized, but realistically in America it won’t be, either, because everyone in American politics is really against that sort of thing.
I think all of the points you make are fair. Seeing your, and other, responses is making me realize that this issue is far more complicated then just accountability. It seems there are a massive amount of economic, political, and cultural ideologies in play. Hopefully, one day, these ideologies can be joined into an agreement that reduces the violence we see today.
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.
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
So you’d be fine with a hand-pump air pistol, then.
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 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.
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’m not sure “this was used in a crime” is the sort of thing that can be legislated or sued over, if that makes sense. I think the more reasonable standard for successfully adjudicating criminality is people’s or their constructs (corporations) acting negligently in the production, marketing, sales, and distribution of “things that can be dangerous” or “things that can be used to commit crimes.”
The huge issue most of the responses in this thread have is that they say “you can’t sue someone for making something just because the end user did a bad thing with it” oversimplification of how basically the entire world works.
The only reason manufacturers of anything have plausible deniability on being partially responsible for crimes committed with their wares is the strong likelihood that they could not have known the end user would do that.
If I hand craft a knife on and sell it on the Internet to someone who sends me a message asking “hey is this knife good for stabbing my bitch ex?” there’s a decent chance a good lawyer could get me for negligence at a minimum and possibly accessory to a crime. Because a reasonable person might conclude that knife would be used for a crime.
There’s a reason a Remington settled the lawsuit from the Sandy Hook families for $75 million: https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/15/us/sandy-hook-shooting-settlement-with-remington/index.html
They were never going to be liable for making the gun (particularly since gun manufacturers have a special law protecting them). But they clearly determined there was a decent chance they’d lose in court regarding how they marked, sold, and distributed guns, so they decided shelling out $75,000,000 was a better business decision.
If there’s a company making screwdrivers out there and they’re aware there’s a screwdriver murder problem in a city and they manufacture and distribute their screwdrivers to that city and put up billboards and take out magazine ads glorifying how good their screwdrivers are in a fight… they ought to be liable. Not because a screwdriver can be used to hurt people, but because they should reasonably be aware that in that city their screwdrivers had a good chance to be used to hurt somebody.
