The question becomes what responsibility and under what circumstance, and how many steps removed. It’s not a simple thing, you can’t just legislate “you’re liable for whatever a sympathetic jury will sock you with unless you do something, up to you to figure out what is it will satisfy them”. Someone’s gonna have to come up with what it means.
And mind you, we are not only speaking of the market chain; we are also discussing inherent safety or operational characteristics e.g. the earlier mentioned proposal that the firearm itself have an integral lock, even then I would expect they would not be on the hook if the consumer leaves it unlocked all the time.
So lets discuss the possibilities, instead of declaring the discussion null and void unless a perfect solution is presented beforehand. Instead of throwing out all suggestions that aren’t completely successful, perhaps we can look for ways to lessen the problems a bit.
I’m a carpenter. And every power tool I own or have ever used, comes with not only a lock out
but also a trigger guard that makes it almost impossible to accidentally start. This seems like a small change to me. This may not correlate to a small increase in price, I don’t know, but it’s small in it’s technicality.
How is this much different from the trigger locks and internal locks that already exist? Not to mention trigger bar safeties, grip safeties, drop safeties, etc…
A firearm is only as safe as the person using it or the imbecile who misuses it. All the locks and safeties in the world won’t stop stupid including whatever magic device you’re demanding. But until you get your magic device you want to hold manufacturers of quality equipment that functions exactly the way it is supposed to held accountable for the actions of others. That is ludicrous.
The majority of my firearms have some sort of safety devise on them to prevent them from being fired accidentally. But these are all manual safeties that have to be deliberately activated by whoever handled the firearm last. With a firearm, you’d have to make sure a trigger guard that makes it almost impossible to accidentally fire doesn’t interfere with the ability to use it for self-defense.
I’ve never seen a revolver with a manual safety (I imagine a few might exist) and Glock, one of the most popular firearms for civilians and law enforcement, don’t have them either. But every rifle and shotgun I own has a manual safety on it.
Well, no one asked for a perfect solution. You solution could be “Hey Stewardess there seems to be a problem.” and let the experts handle it.
But saying that all planes should be grounded and all airplane manufacturers put out of business is not really a solution.
And indeed, letting a ambulance chasing lawyer working on a % show pictures of dead kids to a jury so they decide SOMEONE must must be punished is more or less doing that exact thing.
Actually it does. That bar in the trigger is a safety preventing the weapon from firing until you manually depress it. Glocks also have internal safeties including a drop safety.
The European models also have another external safety and boy, are they ugly.
How does an automatic safety interfere? I’ve never not been able to use my circular saw, and it has a safety that is always engaged. I can’t accidentally pull the trigger, but it’s easy to purposely pull it.
I didn’t say a Glock had no safety but they have a trigger safety not a manual safety. When I activate the manual safety on my Colt .45 ACP I can pull the trigger all day long and nothing is going to happen. With the trigger safety on my Glock, when I pull the trigger the firearm is going to go off.
I would argue that it is on the sellers to ensure the buyer is qualified.
It already is on the bar to not sell drinks to someone underage or already drunk/make sure someone who is impaired doesn’t drive. I can very easily see that apply to gun sellers/manufacturers as well. In fact, isn’t it kinda dumb it isn’t already so?
Prohibition was in large part based on the presumption that the breweries and distilleries were responsible for “pushing” a culture of inebriation. It took thirteen years for people to decide that hadn’t been the case.
It was just an observation about the [already] ugly Glock. 50 ways to make a safety and they use a hideous, bulky, odd to use slide bar system.
But you don’t have to be a dink about everything, do you?
