The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is currently before Congress. The bill, if passed, would “prohibit civil liability actions from being brought or continued against manufacturers, distributors, dealers or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages resulting from the misuse of their products by others.”
Select Democratic senators, including Jack Reed of Rhode Island, are threatening to filibuster the bill.
The legislation comes as a response to frivolous legal actions that are currently polluting the American judicial system. Plaintiffs are claiming that gun manufacturers should be held liable for irresponsible actions taken with their products after they are sold. (Note the use of the word “misuse” in the legislation.)
All these suits serve to do is bruise the gun industry with legal costs and tie down the courts. Eight such complaints have already been dismissed, and none have returned “guilty” verdicts.
Such complainants are apparently frustrated with the way America works. Sensible congressmen have declined time and again to put overly restrictive regulations on firearms out of respect for common sense. Gun controls do currently exist and they are sensible, but some liberals appear as though they will never be satisfied until gun ownership becomes a crime punishable by death. (A typical liberal stance of selective incorporation: Free speech is essential, so long as it is agreeable to their causes; civil liberties are essential, so long as they are agreeable to their causes.) So despite gun manufactures’ compliance with current laws, litigious liberal lunatics are taking them to court.
NRA spokesman Ted Novin sums up the issue when he observes, “The gun-ban lobby hasn’t been able to legislate guns out of existence, so now they are attempting to litigate guns out of existence.”
Sen. Reed’s press secretary was unavailable for comment, but a press release offered the following: “For years [manufacturers and dealers of firearms] have had access to basic technologies that would prevent unintentional firearms death and injury.” If such technologies are truly reasonable, why hasn’t Sen. Reed and a majority of his colleagues successfully made them law?
Should a charismatic, quick-talking lawyer ever succeed in convincing a jury of mere mortals to hold a gun manufacturer liable, the precedent would be devastating. Are knife manufactures also to be held “accountable” every time someone is stabbed? If someone chooses to bow out with a bottle of aspirin and a liter of vodka, is Smirnoff to be deemed responsible? And next time an arsonist goes to work, how much should Zippo have to fork over? After all, the knife, the vodka and the lighter were all “misused.”
There is an old bumper-sticker slogan: “Guns don’t kill people, people kill people.” Firearms are dangerous weapons, but they have also been a vital component of American freedom for over two centuries and serve a vast panoply of non-homicidal purposes. Again, they are only dangerous when “misused.” Some regulations do exist, and they serve to insure that particularly outrageous and egregious weapons that suggest inherently criminal actions are not manufactured. And people cannot simply walk into their neighborhood gas station and get a lottery ticket, some fireworks, a .44 pistol, this month’s Playboy and some ice cream for the kids; there is a background check and registration process in place.
And so it simply doesn’t make sense to allow an industry that is already heavily regulated and closely observed to be ambushed with lawsuits stemming from other people’s irresponsible actions. These are not lawsuits that blame manufacturers for being negligent; they blame manufacturers for manufacturing. Suits directed at the gun industry are based on no decent legal reasoning but rather on the selfish nature of people frustrated with a democratic system that cannot muster a majority to legislate in their favor. Surely if pro-life advocates starting suing abortion doctors for wrongful death, liberals wouldn’t object to legal protection against such frivolous actions. And when it comes to abortions, medical equipment isn’t even being “misused.”
Mac VerStandig ([email protected]) is member #067865434 of the National Rifle Association and a freshman majoring in rhetoric and economics.
