Next time someone mentions gun rights

[BainsBane]

80. Here's the situation

Legal battles against tobacco did not bankrupt cigarette companies. All law suits will do against gun companies is cut into their profits and force them to install safety mechanisms. They won't get rid of guns. Suits against tobacco and alcohol companies prove that to be true. So whether you realize it or not, you are privileging corporate profits above the rights of your citizens. That is the effect of the legal exemptions gun companies face, even if not your intent. You can be sure ensuring unfettered corporate profits and continued campaign contributions were the motivations of the legislators who approved the legal exemptions.

As Glassunion points out below, some other companies have similar (though less encompassing) legal exemption as well. I am equally outraged at those. It is an effort to circumscribe our rights as citizens in order to protect corporate profits. It's also a function of the kind of institutional corruption that characterizes our political system because of campaign financing.

Lawsuit have to make sense to be be successful. A gun company will need to be found negligent in some way to face penalty, as was the case with tobacco companies. Simply developing cancer from smoking wasn't enough for the states to win their landmark case. They won because they found evidence the big three were deliberately making products more addictive. The same would be true for gun companies. I would argue a pink gun is indeed a form of negligence, but a jury might not see it that way. But those are matters of fact that deserve to be adjudicated in court. They have plenty of resources for armies of attorneys. To imagine they would face extinction because of lawsuits is a stretch, to say the least.