Comment on Why shouldn’t firearm manufacturers be held accountable for the use of their weapons in crimes?

• tim-clark@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  I'm heading down to the hammer range to practice hitting nails. Listening to gun nuts talk about the use case for guns is ridiculous. It is actually nice to see a few people in this thread acknowledging what a guns primary purpose is.

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  • radix@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Devil’s advocate: Isn’t the “primary purpose” of a product what it’s actually used for?

    There are over 400 million guns in circulation in the US. In 2021, there were just under 50,000 gun-related deaths.

    Is it fair to say that 0.01% of uses are the “primary purpose”?

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    • tim-clark@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      If you practice shooting then you are just practicing to kill. So the folks that own the 400 million guns in the US are just practicing for the intended purpose. Which then you can extrapolate out they are just waiting to kill. Which falls in line with every gun owner I have known. Either practicing to kill animals or people.

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      • FireTower@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        That extrapolation is like saying that someone who participates in a fire evac drill is waiting for their house/work/school to burn down.

        Being prepared for an emergency situation doesn’t mean you’d want it to happen.

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    • JustZ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      I would say that all those guns that aren’t killing people are not being used. They are sitting in safes or tucked in between people’s couch cushions, just waiting.

      You don’t think they are all being used as display pieces or for target shooting, do you? And, to the extent they are being used for target shooting, that is practice to do what with them?

      They are made to kill. That’s it.

      Air rifles have a primary purpose of target shooting. Nobody is suggesting we hold air rifle manufacturers liable for mass shootings.

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• Widowmaker_Best_Girl@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Now reread the first sentence of the person you replied to.

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Now reread the entire rest of the comment.

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• AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  But as the person said, it’s legal to kill a person in self defense. If it’s legal to do something, and a company give you a tool to do that legal thing, why should the company be responsible if you use that tool to do something illegal? If it was illegal to even have a gun, it might make sense to hold manufacturers responsible, it it isn’t illegal to have or use them in some situations.

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  • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    The sticky part is that killing isn’t just not always inherently legal, but is usually not.

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    • AFKBRBChocolate@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      Killing? True. Shots fired? Probably not true.

      To me, philosophically, it doesn’t matter what the percentage is though. Unless we say it’s illegal to have the gun, it makes no sense to hold the gun manufacturers responsible for gun deaths. What are they doing to make people use their legal device in an illegal way?

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      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Laws are increasingly meaningless when we’re discussing morality.

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      • JustZ@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        What about the law of public nuisance?

        It is not gun makers paying the millions of dollars in damage every time a mass shooting occurs, it is towns and communities.

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      • SpaceNoodle@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Oh, and simply discharging a weapon is typically illegal as well.

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