Targeting gun manufacturers for America's self-created cultural problems?

25 March 2021

. . . and another week of ineffectual outrage.

The following kind'a takes the cake for the United States' (we're blind on purpose) dumbness.

From TruthOut:

[T]he gun industry is consistently ramping up production . . . . Getting guns into circulation quickly is an acknowledged part of the strategy of undercutting regulatory efforts.

The most plain way to impose a cost on the gun manufacturing industry is repealing the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA) and subjecting the industry to public nuisance and public health theories of liability.

These strategies would begin to compel the industry to bear actual, constant and proportional costs of its reckless overproduction and marketing of arms.

In negligent marketing claims, plaintiffs could allege that manufacturers knowingly oversell handguns, particularly into markets with more lax gun regulations, knowing that the initial and wholesale purchasers are essentially buying for sale into second-hand markets, including gun shows and private sales.

The proliferation of guns drives the prices down and increases the ease with which any given person can secure a firearm fairly easily.

A public nuisance theory has even greater potential.

In the context of gun crime, the theory would be that the public safety — our right to be free from the actual occurrence or constant risk of bodily harm from guns — has been recklessly or intentionally harmed by gun manufacturers.

So, you see . . .

According to attorney Ramsin Canon's TruthOut logic, it is weapons manufacturers who are responsible for making Americans afraid of each other, as well as of our tyrannically inclined government.

This curious reasoning . . .

. . . it seems to me, skips a few rationally and ethically important steps.

Such as:

Why are all those guns being bought by scared and freedom-seeking folk?

Is there . . .

. . . just maybe, a cultural association between (a) the United States' Forever Wars, (b) bubbling terrorism's counter-response and (c) continual violence-escalation at home?

Might there even be a noticeable connection between intentionally fostered political divisiveness and the domestic population's perceived need to self-protect themselves from those propagandized Others?

Could America's intentionally cultivated, lowered standard of living (for the many) have something to do with our national mood?

Is Rampaging Capitalism itself throwing the 99 Percent to metaphorical Satan's wolves?

The moral? — In short, TruthOut's well-intended op-ed . . .

. . . comes from the Hapless Bench.

Ramsin Canon's logic favors the Status Quo, but with unfairly targeted minor changes. Those tiny adjustments to be implemented against non-colossus firearms manufacturers that are only small parts of our Corrupt Edifice.

The American System having always been intended to subjugate the mass of humanity to pain, so as to profit the few.

I have trouble seeing this unfortunate economic characteristic as being of American gun manufacturers' creation. Targeting them misses the point. Which, of course, is also typical of our culture.

PeteFree.com

Targeting gun manufacturers for America's self-created cultural problems?