this post was submitted on 07 Sep 2023
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No Stupid Questions

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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?

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[–] DirigibleProtein@aussie.zone 45 points 1 year ago (22 children)

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.

[–] u202307011927@feddit.de 14 points 1 year ago (1 children)

And the scissors!! Also forks!

[–] RogueBanana@lemmy.zip 2 points 1 year ago

Don't forget pencils!

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[–] Pyr_Pressure@lemmy.ca 35 points 1 year ago (11 children)

If firearms manufacturers are to be held liable, what would be the reasoning to also not hold vehicle manufacturers liable in the use of their product in criminal acts?

Vehicles are probably used in just as many crimes as guns are, I imagine, with vehicular manslaughter, running vehicles through protests and crowds, etc.

I can't see a logical reason to target one specific product over others when there are legitimate uses for them (i.e. hunting).

[–] cooopsspace@infosec.pub 9 points 1 year ago

Wait until you find out about fiat currency. Shit has been used in crime since before it was invented.

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[–] JBCJR@kbin.social 24 points 1 year ago (4 children)

“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.

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[–] scarabic@lemmy.world 15 points 1 year ago

Firstly, I hate guns and wish they were far more tightly controlled.

But even I don’t think holding manufacturers responsible for crimes is a good way to go about that. Guns do have legitimate uses.

Should we hold auto manufacturers responsible for a pedestrian who’s hit by a drunk driver? How about we put the workers who built the road in jail, too.

This kind of overreaching liability litigation is why we can’t have quite a lot of good things in this country anymore. We can’t babyproof every aspect of our society.

[–] relative_iterator@sh.itjust.works 11 points 1 year ago (10 children)

You can legally kill someone in a self defense situation so just because guns are designed to kill doesn’t make them different from another product that can be used illegally.

Cars can be used to kill people illegally and we don’t hold the manufacturer responsible.

IMO holding manufacturers responsible would just lead to a legal mess and a waste of court time/resources. I’d rather have better background checks, and other limits on gun purchases.

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[–] mctoasterson@reddthat.com 8 points 1 year ago (3 children)

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.

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[–] curiousaur@reddthat.com 8 points 1 year ago (1 children)

It makes a lot more sense to require insurance, like a vehicle.

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[–] krayj@sh.itjust.works 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (2 children)

Because it sets a precedent that has ludicrous outcomes where the manufacturers of any product that are used for wrong are liable for the damages caused by their use and suddenly nobody wants to manufacture screwdrivers any more. PC manufacturers are now responsible for the actions of hackers and so no more pc manufacturing, auto manufacturers are now responsible for vehicular homocides so no more auto manufacturers, etc, etc.

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[–] JustZ@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (9 children)

The question is one of negligence calculus, aka The Hand Formula.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calculus_of_negligence

I would state the question this way: should a gun maker have a duty to take reasonable steps to ensure the ultimate purchaser will not use it in a crime?

The concept of negligence calculus comes from a case involving what steps a mariner must take to ensure their boat does not breakaway from its mooring and smash the whole marina to all to shit?

The rule was stated:

[T]he owner's duty, as in other similar situations, to provide against resulting injuries is a function of three variables: (1) The probability that she will break away; (2) the gravity of the resulting injury, if she does; (3) the burden of adequate precautions.

A good example is the duty of a railroad to protect people at road crossings.

Is it enough to have a policy that conducters blow the whistle? Must the railroad ensure that there are gates, lights, and bells, at every crossing? If it is a blind intersection, must the conducter send the engineer down to the roadway to manually wave off any traffic?

  1. The probability of the train causing an injury depends on how busy the intersection is.

  2. The gravity of train injuries is very serious; I've seen it, they chop you up like a fish.

  3. The burden of blowing a whistle is minimal, if it's a remote crossing that might be an adequate precaution; the burden of installing and inspecting crossing devices such as bells and gates is massive, but again the gravity of injuries resultant from trains is catastrophic.

The evidence a plaintiff puts forth in a civil lawsuit, to a jury of peers, in public, is to say: this is the extent of my injury, these are the circumstances in which I became injured, and this is what the defendant did or did not do to cause the circumstances. The question for the jury is, was the defendant's conduct reasonable?

The thing with guns, not unlike trains, is that second part of the equation: that the nature of resultant injuries are so serious, such as classrooms full of dead kids so blown apart by bullet that it takes DNA identify the bodies, or shopping plazas strewn with dead families who bled out trying to crawl away. You must think of all the injuries, not just the primary victims. The taxpayers of Newtown, Conn. had to build a new elementary school, paying workers' comp. benefits to town employees spouses and kids that could go on for decades. Hundreds of millions of dollars in damages.

The burden of prevention could be comparatively minimal. Doing a private background check on every purchaser is minimal. Insurance companies do it for every policy they write and every claim they adjust. And with data analytics it is easier than ever. Family status, work status, gun and ammo buying habits are apparently the major predictors of whether someone is likely to commit a serious gun crime. Here's another example: credit scores are apparently a better predictor of driving risk than driving history!

These questions of risk can be analyzed and can be apportioned.

In my view, gun owners and makers should be liable in tort for damages caused by their weapons. This is a matter of the intended use of the product and the privity of contract between the manufacturer and the end purchaser, no different than product liability law. People injured by guns should be able to bring the manufacturer before a civil jury and say: these are my injuries, these were the circumstances in which they happened, these are the steps the manufacturer took or did not take to prevent it, and let a jury decide if the steps were reasonable based on the probability that the harm would result and the extent of the burden of avoiding it.

It would be a lot of risk to manufacturers. If found liable, they would be able to sue the end user for contribution, just as in a product liability case; that's called subrogation.

You can get gun insurance right now but it's not required, which makes gun owners self insured. Gun makers could get business liability insurance, too; I think most of them self insure these risks, now, though, because they are immune from such lawsuits, that's why Remington went bankrupt after the suit against it for Sandy Hook went forward, and it was non or under insured.

If end users were required to carry insurance, the risk of damages is on those insurers, which it bear voluntarily in exchange for premiums. This relieves the manufacturers, the end users, and the public. Right now, the communities bear the entirety of the risk, gun owners can buy whatever guns they want, however many they want, and when they're mental facilities eventually decline to the point of the violent instability, they have no responsibility beyond their net worth.

And, as a matter of principal, even right now, nobody can claim to be a responsible gun owner if they are non or underinsured for damages caused by their gun.

[–] MisterMcBolt@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

Fascinating! Thank you for this contribution and sourcing further reading material. I just read a bit into the Remington / Sandy Hook lawsuit you mentioned. Despite many opinions posted here suggesting that it’s impossible and/or unethical to blame the manufacturers, there’s a clear case of a civil court recognizing such damages.

[–] AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago (1 children)

But: manufacturers don't generally sell direct to the consumer, they sell to stores. Doesn't your argument say that it's the stores who should be liable, not the manufacturers?

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[–] CMLVI@kbin.social 4 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] TheOneCurly@lemmy.theonecurly.page 2 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

I would support this if there was evidence that manufacturers were knowingly (or purposefully not doing due diligence) selling to distributors who weren't following the rules or were somehow pressuring distributors to bend the rules to sell more (conspiracy). Otherwise its really on the distributors to be doing background checks, adhering to waiting periods, and using proper discretion. If we want less guns around then there need to be legal limits on sales and ownership, and those limits need to be enforced.

[–] WheatleyInc@lemmy.world 2 points 1 year ago

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.

[–] RIP_Cheems@lemmy.world 1 points 1 year ago

Because the manufacturer didn't use the gun in a crime. If anything, the only person who could be responsible is the seller of the firearms, and even then it's unlikely that they could be sued as, again, their not the ones who used the gun in a crime, unless that crime is selling to a minor or someone who isn't allowed to own a gun.

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