Responsibility and liability

The Indiana Court of Appeals has said that the city of Gary can go ahead with its attempts to make gun manufacturers liable for guns that end up in the hands of criminals. As the case heads for the Indiana Supreme Court, the two sides will argue whether the federal shield law protecting the manufacturers should prevail or whether the state’s nuisance law should govern. But the isssue ultimately is about where the line should be drawn between moral responsibility and legal culpability:

The ruling stems from a suit by Gary that resulted from a sting operation in 1998 that revealed that six northern Indiana gun dealers provided more than 60 percent of the crime guns recovered in Gary, Siebel said.

Some dealers were in the top 20 dealers in the United States selling crime guns.

The usual argument against suits such as Gary’s is that they try to put the responsibility in the wrong place — i.e., somewhere other than on the person directly causing harm. It’s like holding a liquor manufacturer liable because some people commit crimes while drunk or a car manufacturer liable because some people drive recklessly.

But surely it’s a little more interesting than that. With its sting operation, Gary can make at least a plausible argument that some gun dealers were acting irresponsibly and perhaps even criminally. They weren’t just selling the guns to law-abiding citizens and then falling down in shock when a few of the guns ended up in the wrong hands.  They seemed to be working pretty hard to be reckless.

That being the case, how high up should the liability go? What if it can be shown that a specific gun manufacturer knew that a certain dealer was actively funneling guns to criminals and did nothing to get that dealer off its distribution list? If I make, say,  quality knives, and one of my products one day ends up in the hands of someone who stabs his father with it, that’s not on me. But what if I sell them to a wholesaler who I learn goes out of his way to sell them to those convicted of violent felonies? If I continue to provide them to him anyway, how much of the mayhem is on me?

As you may know from reading this blog, I’m a strong supporter of the Second Amendment — I’m not going to be cheering for the Brady Center anytime soon. But we should be careful not to automatically dismiss everything the other side says. Any time it is possible to say someone or some entity has a moral responsibility for something, it is at least a debatable point whether there is some legal liability.