Posted on 04/13/2005 2:16:30 PM PDT by crazyhorse691
Gun manufacturers and dealers do not deserve a unique legal shield from the consequences of their products
I t is hard to understand how Congress and the Bush White House can look out across a nation bloodied by gun violence -- where tens of thousands of people die annually from gunshot wounds -- and conclude that what this country really needs is a bulletproof gun industry.
Yet any day now the House and Senate are expected to take up legislation granting legal immunity to gun manufacturers and sellers, and provide them with a shield from damage claims when their products kill or maim.
Maybe there is an industry somewhere that deserves such unique legal protections, even when its manufacturers or dealers are grossly negligent. But none comes quickly to mind. Certainly the U.S. gun industry does not.
The immunity bill, introduced by Sen. Larry Craig, R-Idaho, and Rep. Cliff Stearns, R-Fla., would protect gun makers and sellers from damage suits. We have never supported the broad lawsuits brought by a few cities against gun makers, but Congress need not, and should not, deprive all gun-violence victims of legal claims against negligent gun manufacturers or dealers.
The immunity bill shows just how warped the debate over guns has become. The 10-year-old assault weapons ban is dead, allowed to expire last year without so much as a debate in Congress. Background checks of gun buyers are now treated like the most precious secrets the government holds, destroyed within 24 hours.
Recently, the Government Accountability Office turned up another appalling example of how gun rights have been allowed to trump every other concern in public life -- a review of FBI and state background-check records found 35 people whose names appeared on terrorism watch lists were permitted to buy guns. You know the gun-rights crowd owns the White House and Congress when even suspected terrorists have a legal right to buy guns in this country.
The immunity bill is just as wrong and reckless. It would not just stop cities and states from filing lawsuits against the gun industry. It would also stop civil lawsuits like those filed by the families of the victims of the Washington, D.C., snipers, who were shot dead by a rifle that was among more than 200 guns "lost" by a Tacoma gun dealer.
Some gun owners themselves may regret giving gun makers legal immunity. The bill before Congress would even block most injury suits from gun owners, meaning that the purchaser of a gun could not sue even if a poorly made gun blew up in his face, or fired unintentionally.
The gun industry argues that it sells legal products and should not be held accountable when someone misuses one of its guns. That argument presupposes that everyone from the gun-maker to the distributor to the dealer acts responsibly all the time. If that were actually true, the industry would have nothing to fear in court.
The gun industry does not require or deserve a legal shield that would be unique among U.S. industries. In the end, it is stunning that in a nation riddled with gun violence, Congress and President Bush are prepared to shield only those who make and sell guns.
Wahhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!
Gun grabbing is a religion to them.
"White House can look out across a nation bloodied by gun violence..."
Yeah. We should get the crime rate of Great Britain. /sarcasm
They do have a point. It should not be a gun-industry-only law.
It should cover *every* industry. If they did that, 90% of the lawyers would be out of a job in their current line of work.
All it does is to say that if a gun was legally made and legally sold and then somehow it ends up used in a crime, blame the perp not the maker.
Gun grabbing is a religion to them.
======
Ah, yes, the ultra-leftist Oregonian. I travel to Oregon alot on business, and hear it referred to as the "FISH WRAPPER" up there. It fits.
Think I'll go into the gun business. Since it's illegal for me to go out and kill liberals myself, the least I can do is make guns that I know will be used to kill and/or maim thousands in the criminal/liberal class.
You know the free-speech crowd owns the White House and Congress when even suspected idiots have a legal right to write editorials in this country.
yes, all my guns and knives and cars and baseball bats and golf clubs and all those other fun items that can be a potentially lethal weapon, jump up by themselves and go randomly injuring people. I would say, I'm always amazed, but since we're talking about liberals who wish to do away with private gun ownership, i'm not really amazed. It's just a symptom of this country where we tend to blame anything but ourselves, in that we deny the person involved in harming someone else, and blame the weapon used.
As well, I would like to see exactly how much of that supposed gun violence is justified shootings. Why can they not talk about all the lives that have been saved through gun violence against criminals.
Using the reasoning in this article, the auto makers are responsible for accidents caused by drunk drivers. And the hair dryer manufacturers are liable for deaths caused by fools who drop their appliances in the tub.
"Ah, yes, the ultra-leftist Oregonian. I travel to Oregon alot on business, and hear it referred to as the "FISH WRAPPER" up there. It fits"
And if people would buy OTHER papers to wrap their fish in, this one would have to lay a few Useful Idiots off their staff....
It just happened in Seattle....
And all should be shielded from the lawsuit stupidity which is stifling innovation and creativity in this country. It's common sense, it's sad that we have to legislate it, but we NEED to do this.
I have a client who has a radical new idea for a device that could change the world - but he's never going to build it because someone somewhere will misuse it and then sue him into the poorhouse. This stupidity needs to stop NOW.
"Hyperbole. Straw Man. Lie. Lie. Straw Man. Lie. Hyperbole. Hyperbole. Lie. Lie. Straw Man."
Gun Manufacturers dont need a law stopping them from getting sued by people who receive a defective gun. What they do need is a law that says because someone was killed with a gun they manufactured it doesnt mean they are responsible, Thats what they need and thats what this law gives them. Just like Chevrolet isnt responsible for a drunk driver that kills someone in their Corvette. Smith & Wesson arent responsible for nuts who use one of their guns to kill someone.
Coming soon to video: "GUNS GONE WILD!"
Huh? Where is that Iraq?
Absolutely true! Every manufacturer should be immune from civil liability when their product is used in the commission of a crime!
These nutjobs apparently think Ford should be liable for the use of one of their vans as a getaway vehicle for bank robbers. Ryder should be liable because Tim McVeigh used one of their trucks to blow up a federal building and kill its occupants. Boeing should be liable for 9/11, etc., etc..
The next time Smith & Wesson Co. or the Ruger Co. kill someone, will be the first time! Get a grip! Guns don't kill, people do!
Here are the circumstances that gun manufacturers and/or retailers should be held liable - anyone else have any additions/modifications to this list:
1. If a manufacturing or engineering defect makes the firearm fail (chamber burst/frame splinter, etc.).
2. If a retailer knowingly and illegally sells a firearm to a known felon or other mental defective - in spite of a legally mandated background check according to current law.
If I purchase a gun, follow the directions for safe use, and the gun blows up because it is poorly designed or manufactured - that is the liability of the manufacturer.
If a known criminal goes in to a firearms dealer and buys a gun - with no paperwork and no background check - the retailer should be held liable. The exception would be if a proper background check is performed and the FBI system fails to flag the sale/transfer.
Give me a break, how far can this go?
I'd sooner sue the public schools which put out people who then murder after 12-years of athiestic brainwashing than I would sue Colt, S&W, Ruger, etc.
The "editorial board" is made up of loony toon characters. It scares me that insanely stupid people like that are allowed to breed.
--yep--if the NRA could sue successfully for slander and libel-we (I'm the NRA) would own every media outlet in the country---
Give me a break, how far can this go?
They are terror SUSPECTS, not terrorists. Innocent until found guilty.
Sen. Schumer pulled this in a hearing with Gonzalez about the Patriot Act, taking time out from his arguments about how the Patriot Act infringes on the rights of the citizens so he could argue that terror suspects shouldn't have the right to buy guns. At one point he asked Gonzalez why we let terrorists buy guns.
If I were Gonzalez I would have pointed out that we don't just want to stop terrorists from buying guns, we want to put them in jail or kill them. Then I would have asked why Schumer wasn't requesting that we jail everybody on the terror watch list.
Schumer would of course not answer such a question, but if he did he would have to admit that they were not terrorists and we couldn't jail people without evidence. Then Gonzalez could say that we can't take away their rights without evidence either.
And he could have said that a terror watch list won't work if we don't allow non-terrorists to show up on the list. Which means we can't use the watch list itself to ban people from airlines, or from buying guns.
The watch list should give us a trigger to pay more attention to a subset of the population, both to deter them if they are terrorists, but more importantly to be able to put information together to discover plots before rather than after.
Rejecting purchases of guns by those on terror watch lists would tell the suspects that they are on the list, which is something we don't want them to know.
You beat me to it PzLdr. People who point at others and demand that they be punished for Constitutional Enterprises should not whine when their time comes.
Don't forget the match-makers for fires in the house, and food suppliers for whenever someone gets food poisoning because the food is not stored or prepared correctly.
We also need to go after the bathtub and pool manufacturers for drownings, and umbrella makers for giving people the false sense of security in a thunderstorm who might end up getting hit by lightning.
Here's some more:
Spray Paint - gang violence, \
whetstone - knife attacks (sharp knives work better),
Local Gym - assault and battery by pumped-up patrons
Fishing Supplies - mercury poisoning
I wonder how the Oregonian editorial board would feel about the rights of any otherwise-qualified American or legal resident to own...say...an automobile.
Yes, there are already a plethora of laws concerning automobiles but automobiles kill and maim HUNDREDS of thousands of persons in the United States each year, pollute the air, use up precious non-renewable resources, promote unhealthy lifestyles, are noisy, blah, blah, blah.
Automobiles really should be more closely regulated and manufacturers held accountable when they manufacture defective products. As a matter-of-fact, automobiles are inherently a defective product because there are so many in circulation in such varying conditions of disrepair and misuse that it can be safely said that at every moment of the day and night, 365 days of the year, year in and year out, someone somewhere in the the United States is deliberately using an automoble recklessly manner and with wanton disregard to the health and safety of their fellow Americans. And the automobile manufacturers know this and yet they still carelessly manufacture their products without adequate safeguards to prevent this unauthorized use and sell them without due care for throughly screening who is allowed to purchase them. Furthermore, the manufacturers are engaged in a long-running vast conspiracy to suppress the mass-transit and renewable energy alternatives to automobiles. In fact, the only way to make the public truly safe from the continuing dangers of automobiles is to ban them entirely except for the few needed for legitimate use by the government and other properly licensed and certified agencies.
Where would the Oregonian editorial board stand on banning the automobile? Would it stand with the total ban advocates that intend to use every stretch of the tort laws and every sympathetic circuit, court, and judge to drive their agenda forward? Or would they say enough is enough, and see that, while the automobile was not entirely safe when improperly maintained or deliberately misused, it's net utility and benefit to society warranted that it continue to be available to the boardest protion of the public?
With liberals, who knows? Maybe they would prefer that we all walk and ride bikes on our daily 35-40 mile commutes. In the dead of winter. In North Dakota.
I have not seen the specific language of the legislation. Perhaps it is overly broad and needs fine tuning. From articles I have read, I do know it arises as a response to the gun ban advocates attempts to use unsafe product lawsuits as a weapon in a campaign to incrementally strip Americans of the right to own firearms; a right constitutionally guaranteed to American citizens.
You have no constitutionally guaranteed right to own an automobile. Be afraid, be very afraid.
Savage has it right. Liberalism is a mental disease.
Obviously personal responsibility has not place in this equation.
gad, for just a moment I was tempted to explain the difference between:
a legitimate liability action holding a company responsible for a product which fails to function as designed and advertised
- and -
a frivolous lawsuit attempting to bankrupt an industry through spurious pretense of holding them accountable for criminal misuse of their fully functional and legal products...
then I came to my senses and realised the author knows all this AND DOES NOT CARE.
Not really suspects, Those are people might possibly have committed a crime.
Watch lists are for people whom the Goverment thinks might commit a crime.
This article is pure bunk .
The purpose of the gun suits is to extend the legal concept of "proximate cause" to absurdity.
It also gets rid of intervening surpravening criminal act as breaking the cause chain.
Lawyers want money they don't give a poop about guns.
Most cities have ONE newspaper and that ONE newspaer is leftist and loosing readership.
I seriously believe if 100% of all left leaning papers fired their entire writing staff and were just distributers of classified ads and coupon inserts there would be no significant drop in readership.
>>>>"White House can look out across a nation bloodied by gun violence..." <<<
The White House can also look out at a nation that is free because of guns. God knows if it werent for guns we would be a nation under the Thumb of some other nation that had them.
" ... a nation bloodied by gun violence -- where tens of thousands of people die annually from gunshot wounds --"
death rate of americans is roughly a million a year, 45% live by liberal views, 450,000 deaths can be attributed to liberal views, ban liberalism... if it saves just one life... by his logic.
teeman
You're on to something! ;)
I find it interesting that the Left will blatently fabricate figures on the dreaded gun, ( tens of thousands of [American] people die annually from gunshot wounds ) while literally ignoring the dreaded automobile which kill forty five thousands of Americans in the same period.
Yet, even here on FR, it is not challenged.
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