Why shouldn’t firearm manufacturers be held accountable for the use of their weapons in crimes?
Why shouldn’t firearm manufacturers be held accountable for the use of their weapons in crimes?
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.
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.
The littering concept is called public nuisance.
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.
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!
Don't forget pencils!
The manufacturer is making a tool with the intention of killing.
You have a point. But you are skipping a road of reasoning here.
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.
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.
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.
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.
“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.Your spoon doesn't make me fat. Unless your spoon has ice cream on it and I'm a willing participant.
Are you also against the requirement of driving licenses?
Weird comparison, specially when many people literally want the existence of actual gun licenses (with education and examination built into it like driving does).
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.
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.
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.
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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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...
That's not why but okay. It's because in those examples there is no foreseeability that the thing will be used to cause harm, just a mere possibility.
My target rifles are not intended to kill.
I'm very pro regulation. I think speech should be treated exactly like cars. Insurance is required, licenses, that are required to be renewed every 5 years, training and regular inspections are not too much to ask for a voice that can easily persuade people to commit atrocities.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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 cars 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.
Edit: cars, not cats. I think we all agree cats should be illegal.
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.
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.
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.
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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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.
Well, to keep up the analogy, it wouldn't be the gun manufacturers advertising that...that's more the realm of the ammunition manufacturers. For a given gun, some ammunition is designed to be lethal, and some ammunition is designed to be non-lethal.
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.
However, I’m quite concerned about firearms being used for their primary purpose: killing people
Killing someone is not immediately against the law, though. It depends on your state laws and the context of the killing. In most states you can kill someone to defend yourself from a reasonable threat to your life.
The "primary purpose" is not murder. It's to kill someone. I would perhaps agree with you depending on the weapon. Like if a company was selling a grenade that explodes with cyanide gas or something. I think they should be held liable for that.
However, I’m quite concerned about firearms being used for their primary purpose: killing people.
That's where you're sort of wrong. Their advertised, primary purpose is self defense or hunting depending on the weapon both of which are legal actions. Deliberately using a weapon to commit murder outside of these intended purposes is a misuse of the weapon no different than deliberately using any other item outside of its intended purpose to commit crime.
Edit: this is a simplification of the issue but it's the basic idea.
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 (r)(TM), 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.
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' 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.
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.
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.
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?
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.
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.
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.
The question is one of negligence calculus, aka The Hand Formula.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence
I would state the question this way: should a gun maker have a duty to take reasonable steps to ensure the ultimate purchaser will not use it in a crime?
The concept of negligence calculus comes from a case involving what steps a mariner must take to ensure their boat does not breakaway from its mooring and smash the whole marina to all to shit?
The rule was stated:
[T]he owner's duty, as in other similar situations, to provide against resulting injuries is a function of three variables: (1) The probability that she will break away; (2) the gravity of the resulting injury, if she does; (3) the burden of adequate precautions.
A good example is the duty of a railroad to protect people at road crossings.
Is it enough to have a policy that conducters blow the whistle? Must the railroad ensure that there are gates, lights, and bells, at every crossing? If it is a blind intersection, must the conducter send the engineer down to the roadway to manually wave off any traffic?
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The probability of the train causing an injury depends on how busy the intersection is.
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The gravity of train injuries is very serious; I've seen it, they chop you up like a fish.
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The burden of blowing a whistle is minimal, if it's a remote crossing that might be an adequate precaution; the burden of installing and inspecting crossing devices such as bells and gates is massive, but again the gravity of injuries resultant from trains is catastrophic.
The evidence a plaintiff puts forth in a civil lawsuit, to a jury of peers, in public, is to say: this is the extent of my injury, these are the circumstances in which I became injured, and this is what the defendant did or did not do to cause the circumstances. The question for the jury is, was the defendant's conduct reasonable?
The thing with guns, not unlike trains, is that second part of the equation: that the nature of resultant injuries are so serious, such as classrooms full of dead kids so blown apart by bullet that it takes DNA identify the bodies, or shopping plazas strewn with dead families who bled out trying to crawl away. You must think of all the injuries, not just the primary victims. The taxpayers of Newtown, Conn. had to build a new elementary school, paying workers' comp. benefits to town employees spouses and kids that could go on for decades. Hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.
The burden of prevention could be comparatively minimal. Doing a private background check on every purchaser is minimal. Insurance companies do it for every policy they write and every claim they adjust. And with data analytics it is easier than ever. Family status, work status, gun and ammo buying habits are apparently the major predictors of whether someone is likely to commit a serious gun crime. Here's another example: credit scores are apparently a better predictor of driving risk than driving history!
These questions of risk can be analyzed and can be apportioned.
In my view, gun owners and makers should be liable in tort for damages caused by their weapons. This is a matter of the intended use of the product and the privity of contract between the manufacturer and the end purchaser, no different than product liability law. People injured by guns should be able to bring the manufacturer before a civil jury and say: these are my injuries, these were the circumstances in which they happened, these are the steps the manufacturer took or did not take to prevent it, and let a jury decide if the steps were reasonable based on the probability that the harm would result and the extent of the burden of avoiding it.
It would be a lot of risk to manufacturers. If found liable, they would be able to sue the end user for contribution, just as in a product liability case; that's called subrogation.
You can get gun insurance right now but it's not required, which makes gun owners self insured. Gun makers could get business liability insurance, too; I think most of them self insure these risks, now, though, because they are immune from such lawsuits, that's why Remington went bankrupt after the suit against it for Sandy Hook went forward, and it was non or under insured.
If end users were required to carry insurance, the risk of damages is on those insurers, which it bear voluntarily in exchange for premiums. This relieves the manufacturers, the end users, and the public. Right now, the communities bear the entirety of the risk, gun owners can buy whatever guns they want, however many they want, and when they're mental facilities eventually decline to the point of the violent instability, they have no responsibility beyond their net worth.
And, as a matter of principal, even right now, nobody can claim to be a responsible gun owner if they are non or underinsured for damages caused by their gun.
Fascinating! Thank you for this contribution and sourcing further reading material. I just read a bit into the Remington / Sandy Hook lawsuit you mentioned. Despite many opinions posted here suggesting that it’s impossible and/or unethical to blame the manufacturers, there’s a clear case of a civil court recognizing such damages.
But: manufacturers don't generally sell direct to the consumer, they sell to stores. Doesn't your argument say that it's the stores who should be liable, not the manufacturers?
Nope. In products liability cases, everyone in the chain is liable.
What you're talking about is the general law of privity, that says you cannot sue for negligent performance of a contract a non party to the contract.
Products liability is an exception to privity, especially modernly.
Gun makers would be liable under the normal rules of common law negligence and public nuisance, they are only immune because Congress passed a statutory exemption.
A good comparison here is the explosives industry. The product is so inherently dangerous and the consequences of negligence so serious, that the common law imposes strict liability. This was also true of people who impound a natural water course on their property. In each case, it it the general risk of serious injury to the public at large that justified strict liability. This is the doctrine of ultra hazardous activities. When Congress passed the exemption, it was a direct response to law review articles and a couple of lower court decisions finding that the manufacture and sale of high powered weapons to regular people fit the definition of ultrahazardous for purposes and could be held strictly liabile.
This was an interesting post to read. I do think the ship captain and railroad comparisons are not close enough to gun manufacturers. In the ship analogy it would be the shipwright OP is asking about.
Glad you enjoyed. I don't mean to suggest they are the same, just illustrate the the concept of a defendant's general duty to prevent others from being injured as a result of their conduct. It's a function of the gravity and probability of harm.
Explosives manufacturers might be a better example. They are held strictly liable for any fuckups, so they need to make sure the people they are selling to aren't going to fuck up. Compliance audits up the yin.
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You said it yourself when you compared cars to guns. Can’t really have it both ways by holding some manufacturers liable for the unintended uses of their products and giving others a pass. You could argue the same for knifemakers, baseball bat makers, etc. They’re both fairly good at causing traumatic injury or death. Cars OTOH are designed to prevent injuries or death as much as possible, even if they hit a pedestrian.
That said, you are absolutely correct about guns purpose being to deliver injury or death at a distance. That’s why they exist in the first place. No equivocation can change that, I don’t care if people target shoot with them or whatever, they’re killing machines.
Problem is that guns are a right in the US. There is absolutely no way on this earth that the people who wrote that right as an amendment had any clue of what guns would turn into, how they would be politicized, how people would have personal arsenals, or how much death they would cause among the population. Their shortsighted brevity when writing that amendment has killed tens of thousands of people every year.
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.
Because they have a lot of friends who make laws. So coincidentally, the laws benefit them.
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
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.
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.
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.
You'd like the film Runaway Jury.
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.
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.
One, people can make their own guns, it's not that hard, and secondly, criminals can and do steal stuff. They don't care about commiting extra crimes, they are already going to jail if caugh. All this will do is to make it harder for non-criminals to obtain guns for hunting or self defense.
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?
Yeah. They're obviously 'co-liable' once they deliberately design something to be dangerous to people.
They should be forced to make the guns harmless to humans and animals and then I'd be okay with it.
airsoft guns are a thing. they are what is used during targeting competitions
With respect- that is not accurate.
Airsoft guns use spring-pistons or compressed air tanks to fire little plastic balls that don't generally pierce the skin. They are NOT accurate at all. Airsoft guns are used for gaming and recreational activities- like paintball, just no paint. It's very much a team sport with honor system, because if you don't call your hit (loudly say HIT and put your hand up and exit the field when hit) there's no obvious way to tell you've been hit.
Air rifles and pistols are sometimes used for certain target competitions. These use air pressure from a tank or hand pump to fire a lead pellet at energy levels that WOULD pierce the skin or kill a small animal like a squirrel. The air rifles are generally quite accurate.
However due to the mechanics of how they work, air guns are not usable for many target sports like 3-Gun.