Photo via Gage Skidmore/Wikimedia Commons (CC BY-SA 3.0), Metropolitan Transportation Authority of the State of New York/Flickr (CC BY 2.0)
July 7, 2021, 12:46 pm
Republicans are currently very upset with New York Governor Andrew Cuomo for reinstating “public nuisance liability,” which allows U.S. citizens to bring civil lawsuits against companies whose products result in mass death, ending the gun industry’s sole immunity throughout the state. This would once again allow the people of New York to sue gun manufacturers for creating and promoting weapons like the AR-15 which make it possible to shoot a whole lot of people very quickly and are a favorite of mass shooters across the nation.
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It’s no surprise that conservatives like Senator Ted Cruz took issue with this, once again making the ill-advised move of comparing guns to vehicles.
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“This is a complete lie from a corrupt liar,” claimed co-founder of the far-right rag The Federalist Sean Davis.
“Gun manufacturers are absolutely civilly liable for product defects. What they’re not liable for are *criminal misuses* of their products, just like tire makers and gas stations are not liable for hit-and-runs.”
Davis is generally incorrect in his assertion, as companies that have made products that have proven to be uniquely effective in killing their customers and others are absolutely vulnerable to civil lawsuits even if it’s not a result of a defect—just ask pharmaceutical corporations. However, Cruz couldn’t resist the temptation to double down on this wrongness by saying that you can’t sue a car company if someone hits a pedestrian on purpose in one of their cars.
“Exactly right,” tweeted Cruz. “If your car engine spontaneously catches on fire, you can sue the car maker. If a lunatic deliberately drives his car into a pedestrian, you can’t sue GM because the car went forward when he pressed the accelerator.”
“Exact same rules apply to gun manufacturers.”
Of course, there’s a good reason for this particular limitation when it comes to products that are known to be dangerous in the wrong hands. We do everything we can to make sure vehicles are used safely by a public that must be trained drivers in order to use them—something that many Twitter users pointed out to him.
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Enough people were able to easily point out this obvious flaw in Cruz’s logic that even he had to acknowledge the argument, to which he had the only response that people against any form of gun control ever have: Something something the 2nd Amendment.
In a world that would actually follow logic, Cruz might understand that this only lends credibility to the argument for getting rid of the 2nd Amendment, which some argue has no value in a modern world considering that it was created back when automatic weapons could have hardly been imagined. Or, at the very least, he would just yell “the 2nd Amendment” any time anyone tried to implement or argue for gun control and save us all a lot of time.
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Instead, people are having to explain to him that letting people sue manufacturers of items designed with no other purpose other than to kill a lot does not actually infringe on the right to keep and bear those items, regardless of Bill of Rights status. And it’s not just “Lefties” who think so.
*First Published: July 7, 2021, 12:46 pm
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