A solution to a lot of problems: Strict liability.
Making 3rd parties assume liabilities & pay for the damages must be corrected.
Some of the biggest problems we face today are terrible regulations and vague statutes that allow the transference of liability to third parties. This applies whether we are talking about the DOJ having to sue the train operator in Ohio to cover the damages of a derailment (and prevent the taxpayer being handed the bill for their liabilities of the chemical release) or the Air Force being held responsible for the tort damages of a mass shooting (read: not the gun lobby). Many of the torts being filed rely on deep pockets to be successful. There are no deeper pockets than that of the US taxpayers. Both corporations/other entities looking to pass off their liability and its cost know this and the tort lawyers (aka “trial lawyers”) count on this.
Liberals cry for gun bans and Nationalists pine for a civil war akin to Somalia and the “constitutional freedom” to arm the enemies of this country, but neither is a solution to the problem at hand.
I got a multi-day suspension for calling actor Kristen Schaal a freakin’ moron for her gun confiscation schtick on Twitter. Schaal repeatedly called for widespread gun seizures without exception. When I attempted to provide the IRL scenario of the jewelry courier needing to legally and ethically defend himself from armed robbery, the retort was to seize everyone’s guns including their .410/.22 over-under varmint guns used to keep the rats out of the henhouse on the farm. Ridiculous.
I got jacked up by the far-right gun fetishists when I said the liability of a consumer product should not fall by default on the taxpayer. Well, the far-right, just like the Corporatist right that preceded them in the GOP, loves hand-outs and adores their government welfare, so there is little surprise they were offended by the suggestion that the liability for guns is solely with the manufacturer, dealer, and gun owners. If the taxpayers did not pay the welfare to protect a product lobby, the far-right wingers stomp their feet, make a pissed-off face, and scream “FREEDOM!!!”. Yes, the ridiculous faux freedom of making someone else pay your liability costs.
The gun lobby already jumped the shark over the Remington faulty trigger system that the lobby fought in court as a gun rights issue when it was in fact a simple and straightforward consumer product safety issue. They hid behind a false claim of constitutional freedom to pass off the costs of the injuries and damages caused by 700-series rifles misfiring without anyone putting their finger on the trigger. Now the Sig M320 pistols have the same problem: spontaneous discharge of a round without the user of the firearm doing anything. Literally, any other consumer product in the universe would be dealt with on a standard of product safety, but not the gun lobby. The lobbyists get to turn red-faced and scream “FREEDOM!!!” any time they want someone else to pay for the damages their products caused under any circumstance.
You sold a faulty product, so how is it de facto that the taxpayer is responsible for paying for the damages???
The faulty trigger systems should have the same effect on product safety as Johnson & Johnson did over the Tylenol tampering cases or how Ford was responsible for building Pintos that exploded on impact during a 35 MPH rear-end traffic collision. Can you imagine numerous people dying in relatively minor traffic accidents and then Ford coming to the press conference’s lectern with the defense of yelling at reporters “FREEDOM!!!”, dropping the proverbial mic, then walking off smiling because the bill just got handed to the taxpayer for their product liability?!? Johnson & Johnson Services, Inc. was held liable for the deaths caused by the cyanide poisoning because the consumer could not tell whether the medication was tampered with or not by any reasonable measure. Ford was held liable after BBQing people alive in Pintos (the collisions caused 1) an instant conflagration and 2) the car doors to jam shut preventing escape from the fire). Why not the gun lobby and/or its manufacturers? Why does the gun lobby have a complete shield from all liability, from mass shootings by the insane (who should never have been sold a firearm) to product defects like faulty triggers?!?
Why is not the gun lobby responsible for its own products (read: at any level)? Protectionism applied by Congress (read: not any form of “constitutionality”). This is a racket bar none and it is the same nefarious bullshit we see in bank and airline bailouts. Remember, there was only a $250K insurance limit on deposits as we understood the federal policy until the investor class was at risk. So the insurance limit was raised by executive fiat to over $1B. You got handed the check as the investor class walked out of the restaurant laughing their assess off with their bellies full of caviar, filet mignon, and champagne.
If you created a liability, you, the non-lobbyist, would be held responsible for the costs. The long-term costs of a gunshot can be millions upon millions in health care bills (often that insurance will not cover). Federal law prohibits studying the long-term costs of gunshot wounds, yet funds are provided for studies into long-term cost impacts of everything from medicines to plane crashes to automobile accidents. The airlines can be held responsible for the liabilities of an airline crash, but the gun lobby has a blanket prohibition from even understanding the liability’s specific costs.
Who pays the multi-million-dollar hospital bills from incidents like the Pulse Nightclub? You do. Without calculating the mental health impacts and expenses, the Pulse massacre cost an estimated $385,000,000 with the hospital unable to recover millions and millions of unreimbursed expenses for the treatment of the gun violence victims. The hospital is short $5,000,000 just from one shooting. How do they recover those expenses without going bankrupt and out-of-business? Charge the next ER patient more money, and the next patient even more money, and so on and so forth. In the end, you will be the one handed the bill per usual.
The gun lobby is just one of many special interest groups that have become experts at handing the taxpayer the bill. How can you afford food, medicine, and rent when your paychecks are pre-spent by lobbyists bailing themselves out for the three thousandth time?
Think about it.