Lawsuit Protection: Part Deux

In a follow-up to my recent post on the House passing a bill that shields the fast-food industry from lawsuits whose plaintiffs claim the food is making them obese, the House of Representatives passed another shield yesterday that protects the gun industry. With a 283-144 vote, the law will surely be signed by President Bush as soon as it reaches his desk.

This is great news, for as Bush said in a statement, "[O]ur laws should punish criminals who use guns to commit crimes, not law-abiding manufacturers of lawful products." We can surely expect a lot of commotion to come from this most recent piece of legislation because as so many gun-control advocates claim, guns cause violence and so we should shut down those evil gun makers for good.

No matter what you may think about guns and their correlation to violence, any action taken by the owner of a firearm is of his own volition, not those who made the gun. It is therefore the responsibility of law enforcement to seek justice against the perpetrator, not gun manufacturers. If we start saying that it is Glock's fault if a man is shot in the street by one of their handguns, then it's just the same as saying we should it's Meridian's fault if some homemaker decides to stab her husband for complaining about a poorly cooked dinner.

Besides, by suing the gun manufacturers for a crime they didn't commit, we are draining them of profits that would go towards the improvement of law enforcement weapons, etc. As long as there is a military and a police force in the United States, we will need companies to produce firearms. There may be remote incidents where some of these weapons get into the wrong hands, but it's a bit of a leap to suggest that the manufacturers had any role to play in the transaction.

Furthermore, what would the lawsuit attempt to change? Would they force the company to watch who they sell to, or force stricter safety regulations? These have nothing to do with guns being in the hands of criminals because as long as there's a consumer market, there will be a corresponding seller market. Gun companies will only sell to licensed sellers in the marketplace, but who's to say that an employee in a gun shop doesn't have a side business going on that the owners don't know about?

We can't simply go to the highest of the high to blame our problems on. By suing gun makers we are simply taking away their profits and hurting our own economy. By taking away profits, the gun makers would be forced to economize, meaning they would have to undergo cutbacks that would put more and more workers into the roles of the unemployed. Then who would get blamed? Not the benevolent liberals who are always just looking out for the public. No it would be the evil corporations who simply want to make a profit at our expense.

Well I'm sorry, but I for one have had enough with this blame game. It's time for criminals to take the heat for their actions and not the corporations who literally fuel this economy by providing jobs and investing millions and billions in our domestic economy.