Law that we shouldn’t have needed gives gun industry the protection it deserves

Eric Hydrick / Web Editor

One week ago, the National Rifle Association (NRA) got its top legislative priority when Congress passed a bill that would shield the gun industry from lawsuits stemming from crime victims angry that a gun was used. The reason that this had to be the NRA’s top legislative priority is because victims of crimes where a gun was used apparently have problems holding the shooters themselves accountable for their crimes, preferring instead to blame an industry that makes weapons intended to be used for sport (hunting or target shooting) or defense (like shooting criminals before they shoot you).

Lawsuits and actions against the gun industry after incidents involving someone shooting or threatening to shoot someone else are becoming increasingly common, with many of these efforts aimed at either hurting the gun industry’s ability to legally sell guns or to prevent people from legally acquiring guns. The assumption seems to be that criminals are just waltzing into gun stores and saying “Hey, I need to knock off a bank and kill a few people, what do you recommend?” However, many people also claim that most guns used in crimes were acquired illegally. According to the U.S. Bureau of Justice Statistics website, a 1997 survey of prisoners found that of all the gun crimes committed, the gun used was acquired from a “family, friends, a street buy, or an illegal source” 80% of the time. The gun industry isn’t in the business of selling to criminals, yet somehow we all want to believe that it’s their fault every time some criminal shoots up people and property while committing a crime.

One of the reasons we prefer to vilify the gun industry as opposed to violent criminals who use illegally-acquired weapons (something that is not the gun industry’s fault) to commit their crimes probably stems from shootings carried out by people who, murderous crimes aside, were somewhat likable. Since these people were somewhat likable before becoming murderers, they clearly must have been corrupted by something else, like a major company (since corporations are also popular entities to vilify). The simple fact is that manufacturing a product doesn’t make you responsible for other people’s willful decision to misuse your product for the purpose of committing a crime. If someone is stabbed to death, does that mean the victim’s family should sue the knife industry because someone used the product in a way that the killer knew to be illegal and contrary to what the knife was supposed to do? Should knives be regulated and licensed? You don’t really hear about such a movement, because most people recognize those ideas to be stupid. However, we refuse to recognize similar stupidity when people run around screaming about suing the gun industry because someone intentionally and illegally misused their product.

The gun industry isn’t responsible for the actions of people who 80 percent of the time don’t even legally buy their product. Crimes are committed by individuals, and those individuals are the ones responsible for their actions and who owe crime victims and their families justice, not an industry in the business of making items similar to those used in the crimes in question. The fact that the gun industry even needed this legislative protection is disgusting, since it indicates that society is completely unwilling to demand accountability from those actually responsible, but instead demand it from people who didn’t aid or abet the crimes, condone it or encourage it in any way. If people refuse to make the guilty pay for their crimes, that’s one thing; but it is something else entirely to make the innocent pay for something someone else did. That’s despicable, and far more immoral than any crime committed with or without a firearm.

With any luck, this new bill, once it’s signed into law by President Bush, will force people to demand compensation from those actually responsible for their loss. But even if it doesn’t, it will still protect those who had nothing to do with crimes from having to pay for them. After all, at the end of the day, isn’t protecting the innocent just as, if not more, important than punishing the politically guilty?

Contact Eric Hydrick at pendulum@elon.edu or 278-7247.