Plenty of companies supply weaponry and equipment to police and military without selling much (if anything) to the general public. Bans on private nuclear-submarine ownership (if such a ban existed), or the lack of a ban on suing nuclear-submarine companies, wouldn’t affect the nation’s ability to acquire nuclear submarines. Nations without a 2nd amendment or gun rights still, somehow, manage to arm their militaries (and police when applicable) with effective modern firearms.
So I don’t accept that this has anything to do with our police and military’s ability to get firearms, even if I accepted that the gun industry would be significantly hurt by the repeal of the PLCAA.
Sounds like it might be a reasonable argument.
Well, fribble my grits.
This is indeed pretty amusing – the gun control lobby (and the movement in general) has been an enormous failure. I’m in favor of a few minor measures for gun control – universal background checks and better coordination between intelligence agencies and these background checks – but I don’t think these would have significant effects, nor do I think even the strongest anti-gun regulation efforts would have much of an effect on gun crime, any more than drug regulations have an effect on drug use. There are tons of guns and they aren’t going away in the short or medium term no matter what – this is just part of American culture and society, and some measure of violence will accompany it as long as there are lots of easy-to-get guns.
I don’t think ending the PLCAA would have an effect either – I don’t accept your doom-and-gloom predictions that it would do more than possibly minorly affecting gun prices, and I don’t accept the lawsuit-advocates argument that it would significantly hurt the gun industry.
I’m not much of a gun control guy. I own a gun, and I like shooting. I think the NRA exists almost entirely to enrich Wayne LaPierre and his cronies by spreading fear of mostly nonexistent things – it’s long past the “devolves into a racket” phase of political causes, and I think they’re very good at it. Gun companies are solid investments, and will be as long as they have a majority of Congress in their back pockets.
First the Court system is already backed up with better suits, so it’s a bad idea to add thousands of frivolous ones.
Next- even if a Court decides that a case is frivolous, that doesnt stop the Gun Grabbers from spending more tax payer money to try again, thus forcing gun companies to spend more legal fees.
In America, no company makes just guns for the Military. The factories would have to say idle too long and contracts come and go. Colt makes most of them, currently. And even more so with police weapons.
Nuke subs, etc are different, so the project/contract for that is enough to start from more or less scratch to full prod to shut down.
I don’t accept that this potentially negative thing (if true, even) is worth giving special treatment that financially benefits the gun industry.
This doesn’t change my argument at all – I don’t think lawsuits would significantly harm gun companies, and even if they did, then other companies would step in, plus foreign companies (from which our military and police already purchase weapons and equipment), plus new companies, just like the many, many other countries with no gun rights for citizens which still successfully supply their militaries and police with guns.
If states and cities start passing laws that allowed you to sue on behalf of the dead fetuses, then they would need this sort of protection. If they started passing laws that allowed women to sue for “buyer’s remorse” at any time after they had the abortion, then they would need that sort of protection. But no one is doing that “yet”
Because legal principles have worked that way since we’ve had laws in this country. They are not breaking new ground by allowing those sort of lawsuits.
So why isn’t anyone cracking down on these stores? And how would a civil lawsuit expose wrongdoing where out law enforcement cannot? Or are you relying on the different standards of proof? I don’t get it.
Who gives a shit? The point is that this law is not the sort of legal immunity that you thought it was and now you still oppose it for new reasons.
The law was in response to abuse of the legal system by civilians as well as states and municipalities. When the states and municipalities start to abuse the legal system this way in other industries, I will support them getting the same sort of protection.
None of this was new to me at all - I knew that advocates of the law said it was to protect from abuse and frivolous lawsuits, I just don’t believe them.
They haven’t tried it because it nucking futz. That’s right, the anti-gun folks are even crazier than the anti-abortion folks.
Show me one state where they have a special law that gives you the right to sue abortion clinics in a way that you would not be able to sue anyone else?
Before this law was passed, states were passing laws that would allow you to sue gun manufacturers and sellers in a way that you would not be able to sue anyone else. When the legislatures of various states choose to treat the gun industry like a snowflake then congress can respond by treating the gun industry like a snowflake. If it was just private lawsuits I doubt this law would have been passed.
I think one answer is that statistical evidence, while it can be convincing to me, isn’t legal proof.
Another is that these are the same sorts of stores that (unlike Wal-Mart) sell guns without waiting for background checks when government computers are down, and that, partly because of the ease of buying guns there, they have loyal non-criminal customers who would be outraged by the crack-down. The gun lobby would take their side rather than, as I would prefer, organize a boycott against them.
I’m not relying on anything. I just don’t think it is fair for people who are selling tools for killing to be exempt. The phrase “special snowflakes” is totally relevant here.