Leaving aside whether or not any businesses should be protected from civil lawsuits when their products are abused, isn’t it a bad thing when a specific industry, especially this one which is supported by a powerful lobby (a.k.a. “special interests group”), is singled out for protection?
But more importantly, where is the faith is the U.S. justice system? Are gun manufacturers so sacred and delicate that they must be protected from lawsuits like this? Are “frivolous” lawsuits–those deliberately intended to bankrupt the gun industry–really happening on a significant scale? And, even if they are, it is right for this to lead to the impossibility of perhaps legitimate lawsuits from having their time in court?
It’s good, because they won’t have to defend against asinine claims that the gun itself was defective because someone was killed by it. The fact is, if you pull the trigger and it discharges with no injury to you, the gun is not defective. People have sued on this basis, saying that it is a defective product and that the company is criminally negligent for having sold it. That, of course, is a crock, but do you know how much it costs to defend a lawsuit? These people are suing trying to strike gold, and given that these baseless claims are going to trial there are people willing to give it to them. Even if they win they’re out a fortune. There was for a while the possibility that they could be sued completely out of business.
As I understand it this does not exempt them from legitimate claims, like if the weapon is genuinely defective and blows up in your hands resulting in injury. It’s just exempting them from the politics of the gun control/gun rights argument by forbidding back-door lawsuits intended to drive them out of business. I’m fine with that, just as long as they are still held responsible for poor workmanship and injury due to genuine flaws.
I disagree with giving the gun companies immunity in cases where they sell guns to people that they know or should have known would committ crimes with them. For (a completely made up) example if a person was buying dozens of handguns and reselling them on the street. Its a similar situation to a bar allowing someone that they know or should have known was drunk drive away. There is a duty to ensure that you are not contributing to a crime even if the action you are taking is legal. I have no problem with a company being held civily responsible for actions in these cases.
Well, a car drives without any safety features, but automobile companies are required to add them. For whatever reason, gun manufacturers have resisted being compelled to add any additional features to weapons except the standard safety, which cannot protect against misuse. I think the point of at least some of the lawsuits was to force the gun manufacturers to add features to guns that would make it more difficult for them to be mishandled, like maybe something that would prevent a thief or a child from firing one, perhaps something that would make it impossible to discharge the weapon unless the rightful owner had it in his or her posession.
Is a liquor company responsible if you die of alcohol poisoning? No. Is a car company responsible if you wrap yourself around a telephone pole doing 120? No. Is a rope manufacturer responsible if you strangle a person with their product? No. Is Louisville Slugger responsible if you beat someone to death with one of their bats? No.
I could go on and on, but I think you get the general idea. In none of the above cases was a product defective. It was the nut using the product that was defective.
You have completely missed the point. It has nothing to do with the product being defective rather that companies are selling their products to people that they know or should know will be used in a crime. That is negligent and those companies should be held civily liable for their negligence.
But I think some preventable safety issues with guns aren’t as cut and dry as the example of a drunk wrapping himself around a pole doing a buck-twenty. An automobile is not “defective” if it has no seatbelts, in that it can get you to your destination just fine. But accidents do happen even to responsible people, and, generally, seatbelts tend to keep people alive in collisions that otherwise might have left them dead or more seriously injured.
Again, I’m sure not all the lawsuits were designed to compel gun manufacturers to provide more protections against common mishaps or misuses, but I know at least some of them were. And, given the saftey features other dangerous instruments are required to have, it doesn’t seem unreasonable.
It’s moot, though, as the gun manufacturers are now protected from ever having to deal with the issue if they don’t want to.
And with all of the above scenarios there exists the possibility that selling said products to people will result in the commission of a crime. If Chevy sells a car to a driver who then resells it to an unlicensed driver, is it their fault? If a bar serves a drunk in violation of their parole, is Jack Daniels at fault? If H&B sells a bat to a wife beater and he goes home and beats her with it, are they at fault?
If I throw hot coffee in your face and you get burned, is it McDona… oh, wait, it is. Only in America can we blame the manufacturer for coming through with products that come exactly as advertised.
In general, gun manufacturers do not sell weapons to individuals. They sell them to distributors and, sometimes, retail dealers.
The federal and state governments already impose an onerous set of rules on the sales of firearms. Are retail dealers supposed to develop ESP so that they can determine if the purchaser will do something evil or stupid with the weapon?
It’s the same type of ambulance chasing lawyers that almost killed the general aviation industry in this country, backed by gun-hating zealots who will use any available means to punish gun owners for exercising their rights.
In any of these cases did or should have the companies know that they were selling their products to a person who was likely going to use them in a crime?
:rolleyes: If this is truely your understanding of the McDonald’s case then it is no wonder why you would have a warped opinion of civil cases.
Sure but the distributors and dealers are also covered under this legislation.
No, but if for example a person buys 15 of the same handgun from the same store over the course of an extended period of time thats a good sign he is selling them illegally. Wouldn’t that raise a whole bunch of red flags in your head that this person is probably reselling them illegally? Sure there could be a whole host of reasons why he needs 15 guns of the same model but I would argue that this activity is so far from the norm it should cause concern in a reasonable person. I would consider it negligent for a dealer to continue selling to that person without notifying the police.
If indeed he was negligent why should he be immune from civil liability? Even if you don’t think he is negligent why should he get special protection?
Perhaps but there are also a lot of people severely damaged from guns that were illegally obtained. If the gun companies were negligent in supplying those guns why shouldn’t they be held liable?
Absolutely. They are regularly used in crimes. Far more often than guns, in fact. All of them.
My understanding of the McDonald’s case was that a lady was able to convince a jury that hot coffee burned her when she spilled it on herself because, get this… it was TOO hot. Hello, it’s coffee! It’s boiled water! No shit it’s hot. :rolleyes:
Who knowingly assisted who in committing a crime? Did the CEO of Smith and Wesson hold the window open for the thief? Did the line operator at the factory put the gun in his hand and make him commit the crime? Did the guy who drove the distribution truck drive the getaway car so his accomplice could shoot? No.
I have a gun, and remarkably enough I haven’t shot anybody. I haven’t committed a crime. Most of all, nobody has made me do anything or aided me in any way. In fact, there is not a person that works for Glock, Inc. that even knows who I am. How is it, then, that they collectively can be held responsible for a crime that I commit with a gun made there? It’s illogical to the extreme that some monolithic company is responsible for my personal decision.
Huh? They provided your thief/criminal with a gun. I’d sure as heck call that assisting in their crime.
They aren’t responsible becuase they have no reasonable way of knowing that you would commit a crime with it.
Lets go with a hypothetical here. Say your friend comes over irate about his wife cheating on him with his man. He is making statements about how he wants to go and kill his wife and the man she is cheating with. Except he complains that he doesn’t have a weapon to use. As he leaves he asks to borrow your gun and you give it to him. He then proceeds to go and use your gun to murder his wife and the man.
You provided him a gun when you knew or at least should have known that he was going to use it in a crime. Certainly arming a person that you know is going to commit a crime is negligent. Why shouldn’t you be held financially responsible for that negligence?
Gun crimes committed with illegally acquired guns cost society at large untold billions of dollars in damages. If the gun companies are negligent in the way they sell their guns why should they not be held responsible for the portion of damages that negligence caused?