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

fubo@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago

How about camera manufacturers? If someone uses a Nikon camera to create CSAM (“child porn”), should the Nikon company be liable to the victims? Cameras are made, by design, to produce images of what’s in front of them, even if that is a child being sexually abused. There have been proposals to require digital cameras to spy on their users to ensure that illegal images can be more easily tracked. If a camera manufacturer refuses to do this, citing “privacy” or “freedom of expression”, should the victims of CSAM be able to hold that manufacturer liable?

Some countries, such as the Soviet Union, have restricted the ownership and use of printing equipment, including photocopiers, to deter their use to spread illegal capitalist propaganda. Should photocopier manufacturers be held liable for illegal material that a user photocopies?

Or, sticking to the gun example — How about 3D printer manufacturers? 3D printers can be used to create illegal guns. If you use a 3D printer to illegally create a gun, should the 3D printer manufacturer be held liable?

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rockSlayer@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
Those are good points, but let’s use an example of companies being held liable for consumer behavior: drink companies being held liable for litter from their products. In some places, companies like Coke will receive fines for their products being found as litter, to prevent the use of single use plastics. In a system where the consumer has no choice about how their products are received, it becomes a fair method of harm reduction to penalize companies. The individual is responsible for harming the planet, yes, but the company also shares part of the blame for manufacturing products that are designed to be thrown away.

Different example: car manufacturers aren’t liable for drunk drivers, but bartenders can be found liable. Bars and bartenders can be held liable for accidents involving drunk drivers, if they came from a bar. I wouldn’t change that for anything, even if there’s a perceived “unfairness”.

It’s good that you bring up design flaws and manufacturing errors, because currently firearms manufacturers are immune to product recalls. There are pistols out there from Sig Sauer that are capable of accidental discharge, even with the safety on. To my knowledge it’s still manufactured and hasn’t been recalled. The Consumer Protection Agency can politely ask for a voluntary recall, but current laws mean that the government can’t force a recall on faulty weapons. This needs to change.

I don’t have any ideas on how to apply the littering concept to weapons manufacturers, but I think we should figure it out to prevent people from dying. We should also make guns recallable.

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- FontMasterFlex@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  
  Sig Sauer that are capable of accidental discharge, even with the safety on. To my knowledge it’s still manufactured and hasn’t been recalled.
  
  If you’re talking about the P320, Sig changed their manufacturing and offered to repair/replace any firearms that were made with the faulty trigger, as identified by serial number. I personally helped a ton of customers send their guns back to Sig to get this fixed. This happened over well over 5 years ago. While it wasn’t a federally mandated recall, it was a voluntary fix by Sig, similar to how a ton of vehicle recalls work.
  
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  - rockSlayer@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Thanks for those extra details. I’m not a gun enthusiast anymore, so I didn’t know that the design flaw was fixed. However, from what I remember about that pistol, that information was very difficult to find and was made worse because it wasn’t a voluntary recall. They essentially said “yea, this is a problem. We’ll fix it, but we didn’t do anything wrong”. You did a great service by filling in the gaps left by Sig, but it should have been loudly broadcasted.
    
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    FontMasterFlex@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    It was pretty cut and dry at the time if I remember correctly. It wasn’t a difficult process, nor was the information difficult to find. Again, if I’m remembering right, it was right on their website. It was a number of years ago though, so I could definitely be remembering it wrong. I worked at a gun store / shooting range at the time and remember it being a big deal and we had customers asking US about sending their guns in for repair. So it was widely known they were doing fixes.
    
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- JustZ@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  The littering concept is called public nuisance.
  
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Apepollo11@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
I feel like the analogy of the camera would be more valid if Nikon designed a camera that was specifically designed to cater to the needs of child molesters.

Almost all guns are designed as weapons first and foremost. That’s it.

Fencing is a sport that allows people to duel each other. The foils are items of sports equipment - they have specifically been designed to not be lethal.

Guns, on the other hand, are not items of sports equipment. They are weapons that some people use for sport.

In the US, gun companies are quite happy to produce these for supply to the untrained, unregulated masses. And actively promote this as totally normal. I’d say they hold some of the blame.

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- FireTower@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Theirs an entire field of shooting sports. The Olympics has shootings events. There’s guns made specifically for specific competitions like PRS & IPSC.
  
  When manufacturers do market guns for the purposes of broadly shooting at other humans it’s more specifically the self defense market. There’s a difference between making a product for self defense and making firearms for drive by shootings.
  
  Additionally you have companies in the industry who specifically created entirely new branches just for training. Here’s a link to Sig Sauer’s training side.
  
  The core issues are not that individuals have the capacity to do ill but the motivation and desire. To meaningfully impact homicides you need to first understand the different motivations behind them and change the system that created poor circumstances.
  
  For example tackling drug related gang violence by changing the laws on drugs so as to not create room in our societies for criminal organizations structured around their illicit trade.
  
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  - SpaceCowboy@lemmy.ca ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    Sure if a hunting rifle was used to kill someone then the manufacturer wouldn’t be liable. Killing people isn’t the primary purpose of that kind of firearm.
    
    But a gun that’s primary purpose is to kill people and is marketed as such? Yeah they should be liable for that.
    
    If they are marketing guns for home defense and not making purchaser of the firearm aware that they’re statistically more likely to kill themselves or a family member than ever need the gun for a burglar, that seems like negligent behavior to me.
    
    Also if they’re marketing anything other than a shotgun for home defense they are creating a dangerous situation unnecessarily. Suggesting someone should fire a weapon which has bullets that can penetrate through the drywall inside a house while the person firing is scared leads to all kinds of foreseeable life threatening scenarios. Shotguns exist, they would be better suited for this (extremely rare) scenario. If they are marketing anything other than a shotgun for home defense they are needlessly putting people’s lives in danger.
    
    If people approach this logically (without the standard gun nut wackiness) then yeah there’s a lot of negligence going on, possibly gross negligence.
    
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    FireTower@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    I don’t know which kind of shotgun loading you have in mind but sufficiently effective shotgun loadings (read not bird shot) will 100% penetrate dry wall several times before reaching a not fatal velocity. High mass projectiles maintain course better when flying through materials like dry wall.
    
    A cartridge like .223 which relies on velocity, instead of mass, tends to penetrate walls the least. This is because upon it’s first impact it begins to destabilize, resulting in a faster loss of velocity.
    
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burgersc12@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
We don’t blame beer manufacturers for drunk drivers, I can see the argument being similar. But guns are meant to kill by design. It is slightly different if there was an actual reason to be making them, like cameras, then I would say we do not need to hold the comapanies responsible. But these are made exclusively for death, which i think should be held to different standards than “useful” things

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- weeeeum@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
  Many objects are meant to kill by design. Daggers are frankly entirely useless as a knife but would you sue a company for making a dagger? Even then if daggers were banned people would just use kitchen knives. The bullet that kills the most people in the US is actually the scrappy little .22 LR, a very weak cartridge. If all guns were banned a knife frankly isn’t much less lethal.
  
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  - burgersc12@sh.itjust.works ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    When was the last time someone killed hundreds of people with a knife??
    
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    hydrospanner@lemmy.world ⁨9⁩ ⁨months⁩ ago
    So we will only hold him manufacturers liable when a single actor with a single weapon kills hundreds of people?
    
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