>...blames gun manufacturers for school shootings...
If a new item today entered the market and was misused to the tune of 30,000 deaths per year. Misused far more often than legitimately like stopping an intruder. And the manufacturer knew in advance this would be the outcome, I think we would be right to blame them.
There are many extremely dangerous substances with legitimate uses that would instantly be widely abused that we wisely restrict. I can see no metric that puts most personal weapons outside that category.
> Misused far more often than legitimately like stopping an intruder. And the manufacturer knew in advance this would be the outcome,
Yeah, I'm not convinced. If enough people enjoyed using the item in question recreationally, there'd be enough pushback to an outright ban.
> I think we would be right to blame them.
This doesn't follow from the premises. I'd wager that every item has an ethical use.
> There are many extremely dangerous substances with legitimate uses that would instantly be widely abused that we wisely restrict.
"Restrict" does not entail "forbid". There are already "gun restrictions", just as there are "chemical restrictions" and so on with all the other items you're no doubt thinking of.
>Yeah, I'm not convinced. If enough people enjoyed using the item in question recreationally, there'd be enough pushback to an outright ban.
No doubt. Especially if a large industry emerged to service that recreation.
>This doesn't follow from the premises. I'd wager that every item has an ethical use.
Normally a manufacturer does not get away with a product that he knows will cause 30k deaths per year just by saying that behavior, which is the most common behavior, constitutes misuse. But the ethics of that behavior apparently varies from person to person.
> "Restrict" does not entail "forbid". There are already "gun restrictions", just as there are "chemical restrictions" and so on with all the other items you're no doubt thinking of.
Bulk caffeine is massively more restricted then AK47s
> Normally a manufacturer does not get away with a product that he knows will cause 30k deaths per year just by saying that behavior, which is the most common behavior, constitutes misuse.
Is it the most common behaviour for guns though? Because something like 1 in 3 households in America has a gun, but 1 in 3 households does not house a murderer.
> Bulk caffeine is massively more restricted then AK47s
Just for the record, I never said existing gun restrictions were sufficient, just that they do exist!
> Is it the most common behaviour for guns though? Because something like 1 in 3 households in America has a gun, but 1 in 3 households does not house a murderer.
But do they do anything other than sit on a shelf? Generally after having provided a flash of false psychological comfort at the moment of purchase, that's where they go and stay. At most they might be used to shoot beer cans in an empty field once a year. So while mothballs and clocks might be doing something by sitting, it's hard to see that of high capacity weapons. Particular since they themselves are much more often stolen from those shelves than used to prevent theft.
If a new item today entered the market and was misused to the tune of 30,000 deaths per year. Misused far more often than legitimately like stopping an intruder. And the manufacturer knew in advance this would be the outcome, I think we would be right to blame them.
There are many extremely dangerous substances with legitimate uses that would instantly be widely abused that we wisely restrict. I can see no metric that puts most personal weapons outside that category.