Nope. I was 5 when they were removed from the market.
According to this article though they were removed due to government action and there was never a successful suit. Though they posit that eventually there would have been one. It would seem that the big difference between lawn darts and guns is that gun have thousands of positive use cases and cannot be replaced for many of them so it is unlikely that guns could be considered unreasonably unsafe.
Thanks for the interesting comparison to lawn darts.
Sure, there are very few anti gun people who wouldn’t prefer the US without guns or at least at the level of guns in the UK and Australia. There is no fallacy here when it is admitted frequently.
There is very little trust and even when trying to find common ground it seems that I’m most often met with pithy one liners that zero thought put into them and that once we dig deeper it turns out to not represent any real beliefs. Maybe if the anti gun people were actually pro safety people there could be productive conversation. At least this one is better then the last gun thread.
Bullshit.
I, and others, have started threads begging pro-gun proponents to tell us what gun control measures they might support, and do you know what we got in return? Preemptive attacks on “librul gun grabbers” and suggestions that would actually loosen the laws we currently have. Complaining that suggestions from the other side are always unreasonable fails when your attitude is that any request is automatically unreasonable.
Okay, I know you’re frustrated, and it’s a very emotionally wrought issue for you, but you are being slightly unfair. In this thread specifically I mentioned adding a small tax as an amendment to the liability exclusion specifically to fund additional safety research. I also participated in at least one of the threads I suspect you were thinking about such as Is now a good time to talk about gun safety laws? which I linked above - and I made specific examples of things I would support, as did a few others. Even @DrDeth was willing to consider some of them.
And yeah, there are some “librul gun grabbers” posting in these forums. That’s not both-siderisms, that is a matter of fact. So we have some long time posters that are very adamant on the pro-gun side, and they get set off by other individuals who are equally vehement about ‘evil gun worshippers’ (a near direct quote), and dig in their heels. So let’s all take a breath, and try to find the middle ground, especially on the specific topic of the thread.
For example, in your opinion, what do you feel the manufacturers should be liable for? Is it the marketing as some have suggested, or is it that a specific class/style is beyond the realms of ‘civilian’ use? Let us know your POV on how or why the law should be applied or amended.
The marketing is certainly a problem, as can be seen on the Ruger, Smith And Wesson, Winchester(try to convince me the SXP Shadow Marine Defender was designed with hunting in mind) and so many other websites.
This is a choice, not an inarguable fact of the universe. We choose to make it so that you can create, sell, or buy an object of immense power, and remain blameless when someone takes that exact object and kills another with it. It is our choice to make it this way, and is in fact the very topic of this thread.
Sure, you can unfrozen caveman lawyer us and act like you don’t understand how it all would work, but it’s simple. You build a device that is designed to kill people, sell that device, and someone is killed with it, the law considers you at least partially responsible. You may not like it, but it isn’t hard to understand. So too with the off topic idea of the buyer of a powerful object being responsible for it’s disposition.
It isn’t insane to tell the people who got rich selling hundreds of millions of weapons to Americans that they should have some responsibility for the societal cost of having hundreds of millions of weapons in homes across the country.
You are correct, I did not comment on it specifically. I put it under the general heading of responsible gun ownership. In my comments I was looking to dedicated sportsmen and collectors as having sufficient knowledge of weaponry to positively influence their management.
Weapons manufacturers address markets - hunting, target, personal defense, collecting etc. When they address a market that has a significant social impact they are liable and should not be protected.
Removing protection from manufacturers will bring the issue into the free market. Law suits will determine the cost of addressing markets that have a negative social impact.
A variant of that is what happens in Canada. Gun owners are always going on about how Canadian gun owners are the safest, most vetted Canadians. That the gun control measures we have in place are already reasonable. But then they go on to say that they want to repeal the existing gun control measures. Also, every time any gun control measure is brought up they say (quite literally in the case of one gun lobby) “No compromise!” But THEN they complain when gun control is passed but they didn’t have a seat at the table. Hard to have a seat at the table when your position is “no compromise.” Gun owners are slowly losing the battle in Canada, mainly because they are very good at shooting themselves in the foot. Recently, Canada passed some gun bans. Gun owners responded by saying “This law makes no sense, why is gun X banned when gun Y does the same thing? Also, technically according to the new rules guns A,B,C should be banned but they are not listed.” The government’s response: “Thanks. Guns Y,A,B,C are now banned too.”
Exactly. The goal is to reduce the number of injuries or deaths that come from guns. The goal is not to ban guns.
Gun advocates turn this around and claim that the goal is to ban guns, and the desire to reduce the number of injuries and deaths is an excuse. According to them, the only way to reduce the number of injuries and deaths due to guns is to ban them entirely.
Would it be fair to say that the goal of a gun shop owner is to increase the number of guns in the hands of criminals, as guns in the hands of criminals increases the need for people to purchase guns? Gun sales do tend to shoot up after a mass shooting, after all.
We were able to sue tobacco companies when their product, when used as intended, killed people. And yet, tobacco products are not banned, the tobacco companies didn’t go out of business, I can still buy all manner of tobacco products at any manner of storefront.
No, that’s not it at all. It is the number of deaths and injuries caused by guns is something that should not be tolerated in a civilized society. Ways of decreasing that number are debated among those who feel that we should work to decrease the damage that guns do to our society. Those who do not care about the damage that guns do to our society oppose that debate entirely, and work to insinuate nefarious motives to those who do.
Case in point:
Sure, an “anti-gun” person would like to see no or very few guns in the US, however, the fallacy that you continue to indulge in is that anyone who wishes to see fewer deaths and injuries from guns is an anti-gun person.
There is no common ground to be found when long nuanced points are ignored, and the excuse for doing so is that someone made a pithy one-liner.
Maybe if you would accept that many in these threads actually are pro-safety people, and not immediately label anyone who disagrees with your stance on gun accessibility and availability as anti-gun, there could be a real conversation. But you have already chosen that there will not be one.
I don’t see why the manufacturer of oxycontin could be sued, but the manufacturer of guns cannot be.
The problem in the US is that we have a minority rule system when it comes to issues like this. Even when a substantial majority of Americans want stricter gun laws, they either don’t pass or are shut down by the courts.
They don’t need a seat at the table, they just thumb their noses at anyone who dares to consider making it even slightly harder for criminals or children to get ahold of them.
I’ll make gun advocates a deal. Reduce the 15k gun inflicted murders a year and the 20k gun inflicted suicides a year to a number that I don’t have to be horrified about, to a number vaguely comparable to other OECD nations, and every one of you can mount an M60 to the top of your car. Enjoy!
Suicides are a non issue. If I had my choice we’d have assisted suicide booths across the country and anyone who wanted one could go get offed painlessly whenever they wanted to. That would certainly solve your gun suicide complaint in about 30 seconds.
As for all of the murders we could eliminate all gun murders and still have a higher murder rate per capita than the UK. The solution to that is a combination of mental health care, ending the war on drugs, and then dealing with guns in the hands of criminals. The hardest one is how to remove guns from criminals and I haven’t seen a proposal yet that seems to do that effectively.
None of this has to do with the OP though of how suing the manufacturer would reduce gun deaths. Suicide is the vast majority of gun deaths and no manufacturer safety feature will be able to stop someone from intentionally pulling the trigger of a loaded gun when aimed at their target. The closest we’ve had 200+ posts in to a potential reason to sue the manufacturers was advertising weapons of war to civilians which turned out really meant advertising guns in any shape or form.
I disagree. If you make suicide too easy and tempting, then it becomes a matter of impulse. There are those who make a choice, make a plan, and end their own suffering. Then there are those who are just having a bad day, and would have a better day tomorrow if not for the ease of following through on impulse.
We could, I suppose, hypothetically. Why not try and find out? We have over 4 times as many murders per capita than the UK, so there’s lots of room there. Maybe we eliminate gun murders and we only have twice the murders of the UK, that’s still quite the improvement.
Two things that I never see brought up by gun rights advocates except as a distraction from talking about guns.
Well, requiring background checks and a record of all gun transfers would make a pretty big dent in it. Requiring that gun owners do due diligence in securing their guns would take care of most of the rest. Those would be effective, they are just opposed by gun advocates.
Suing them over their marketing, over their availability, or other ways that the easily get into the hands of people who shouldn’t have them makes perfect sense.
The best way of preventing that is by not having a gun in the first place. Many people have guns because criminals have guns. If criminals didn’t have guns, then they would be less inclined to get one, and have one available when they are having a bad day.
This is not the case. There is no reason that they cannot advertise a gun for its ability to take down deer, birds, any manner of hunting targets, and even against critters and pests.
It is marketing them as being good at killing people that is being objected to in this thread.
Ultimately, this isn’t about the finer points of what exactly is this rate vs. that rate, which deaths do we count and which we don’t. What it’s about is… I don’t care what you own. Own a Bazooka, have fun blowing up watermelons. I. Don’t. Care.
We. Don’t. Care.
None of this is about stopping people from owning something. It’s about stopping people from being killed. Gun proponents don’t have an answer to the problem, if they did it wouldn’t be a problem. So it’s up to the ‘anti-gun’ crowd to find the answer, try to find some way to cut down on the killings without offending the pro-gun crowd.
I think a key difference is that there is no constitutional right to own tobacco whereas one exists for owning a firearm. More specifically, Americans have a right to own firearms for the purpose of defense. Which means owning a weapon specifically designed to harm/kill another human being. It’s certainly constitutional to legislate restrictions on firearms. You can pass laws limiting the size of magazines and the appearance of cosmetic features including barrel shrouds, collapsible stocks, bayonet lugs, flash suppressors, etc., etc. as happened with the AWB back in 1994. But such legislation hasn’t been possible for more than 20 years now. So it’s hard to view the idea of suing gun manufacturers as something other than than an effort to bypass the legislative process.
The reason for my example is to show that them being sued didn’t put them out of business, nor prevent their products from being sold, as the gun advocates say they fear would happen to guns if gun manufactures were no longer shielded from liability.
Anything slightly useful is not, according to Heller.
Like that won’t get pushback
And would probably not be ruled to be allowed under 2A anyway.
Lots of things are hard, but are possible if you put some effort into it, and don’t just jump to your preferred conclusion.
It seems to be forgotten in many threads like this one that on thankfully rare occasions shooting someone dead is the right thing to do. And the deterrent effect of being prepared to shoot someone dead is even more socially valuable. All fifty states have provisions in their laws for justifiable homicide. That’s why we have guns in the first place. The beneficial effect of everything else that occasionally results in deaths- automobiles, swimming pools, etc.- is undisputed but a debate on manufacturer liability needs to take into account the positive benefits of gun ownership as well. One pro-gun book on the subject, a collection of self-defense reports, titled itself “Thank God I Had A Gun”.
How can we reduce gun assaults and deaths in the USA? Gun owners have many suggestions but very few of them involve the gun itself because that’s not where the problem primarily lies but in the people who possess them. For starters, let’s empty the prisons of all the people convicted of simple drug possession and petty street-level dealing and use the cells freed up to impose hard time on anyone using a gun in the commission of a felony. When armed robbery or gang shootings gets you 15-20 no parole and the prosecutors don’t accept plea bargains, the price of wrongdoing with guns will be placed squarely where it belongs, on those who misuse guns.
To reduce children accidentally getting a hold of guns, how many of those incidents result in criminal negligence convictions of the responsible parents? Trigger locks and gun safes require that people diligently use them, and such prosecutions and convictions would send the message that if a child is dead because you didn’t take proper precautions, it’s on you. That’s where the liability belongs, not six steps up the chain of acquisition.
As has been said, repeatedly, the only time these pie-in-the-sky solutions are brought up by pro-gun folk are when they are looking to draw attention from guns. I’ll start buying the argument you are putting forth when you consider them real enough solutions to bring them up independently of this conversation.