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?
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.
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.
Bro’s gonna come up to me and shout me to death
You jest, but there have been people convicted of convincing others to kill themselves with words. Hell, there’s been whole wars waged simply on the words of singular leaders.
Oh sure. Stories are the most influential tools ever invented. Im just saying, its a lot easier to kill someone with a gun than it is with your words, and I think that difference matters.
What about a hammer? Or a rock?
Really, that tired debate? Imagine trying to kill a crowd of people with a rock, hammer, knife, whatever. Now imagine trying to do that with an AR-15 style rifle or whatever the fuck. Now tell me, in which scenario is it easier to kill people?
ok bro you win. i don’t argue with dipshits that blame an item rather that a person.
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.
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…
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?
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.
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.
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.
Right, but the duty of care changes based on the risks.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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!
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.
Are you this shallow and unlearned or are you being silly?
And the scissors!! Also forks!
Don’t forget pencils!
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.
Okay, so do all bowmakers and swordsmiths now get charged for when people commit crimes with those?
Not necessarily a person. Just saying.
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
Handgun hunting is actually a thing
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
The fuck they aren’t. Glock 20 10mm will absolutely drop any animal you point it at. Go ahead and hunt a moose with it if you want.
Not with that attitude.
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…
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.
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?
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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You’d like the film Runaway Jury.
“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?
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.
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.
Your spoon doesn’t make me fat. Unless your spoon has ice cream on it and I’m a willing participant.
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.
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.
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 they have a lot of friends who make laws. So coincidentally, the laws benefit them.
