The littering concept is called public nuisance.
Comment on Why shouldn’t firearm manufacturers be held accountable for the use of their weapons in crimes?
rockSlayer@lemmy.world 9 months agoThose 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.
JustZ@lemmy.world 9 months ago
FontMasterFlex@lemmy.world 9 months ago
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.
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.
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.