General Discussion
In reply to the discussion: David Hogg calls out Bernie [View all]Igel
(35,436 posts)They can't be sued when their products are used. If a thief uses a ladder to break into my house or somebody stabs my cousin to death with a kitchen knife, a lawsuit against the ladder or knife company or the store that sold it to me would be dismissed as frivolous.
If I say, "I'm going to use this knife for killing my cousin" and the store owner says, "Here you go," he's liable. If I am ordering the knife from the manufacturer and say my intent is to kill people, the manufacturer is liable.
Not suing a company for the misuse of their product in the commission of a crime is standard, unless there's some reason for them to be considered liable.
The gun manufacturers were being the subject of the opposite assumption. That by making a deadly product, they were complicit in all the crimes committed with their product. The product was designed to be defective; it's manufacturer was a litigably criminal act. Even if most of the guns weren't used to commit crimes, well, the manufacturers had to know that they *could* be used in that way. Unlike, say, a knife manufacturer, who must be completely unawares that the meat their knives cut could be part of a living human. Knives, I guess, aren't weapons of war. (Even if some were designed for the Army and issued to soldiers. I could buy such a weapon of war at my local army surplus store about 1 1/2 miles away.)
This assumption was part of a strategy to shut down gun manufacturers. We could mount the same campaign against ladder or knife companies. Some judges and juries would buy the argument, with the right emotional appeal. but on (legal) appeal that would be overturned. But the goal of such lawfare isn't the occasional victory, but the costs inflicted by 20 or 30 plaintiffs all going through discovery, all the media attention, and the other legal costs. It's the same kind of thinking that begot a lot of legal action against providers of abortion and other family-planning services. If you can't get a right annulled and can't win the social argument, drive the providers of services and products you personally disagree with out of business.
So the legislation that protects gun manufacturers pretty much re-instated the usual default assumptions. It still lets the usual kinds of cases proceed, meaning that they are not immune from being sued.
BTW, if such a campaign were waged against, say drug companies for accidental death by opioids (as opposed to the quasi-legal pushing that's obvious evidence of misentrustment), knife companies for knife deaths, or cars for the murders committed by their product, I'd support the same kind of legislation.