Gun Manufacturers' Feel Guilty About Newtown? Yeah, right!

I'm sure it doesn't come as a surprise to anyone but I was truly shocked when I read yesterday in The New York Times' that gun manufacturers feel no responsibility, just complete indifference and resistance to the idea that any tracing of guns used by criminals -- or remorse -- might have prevented the recent killings at Newtown and other mass shootings.

In fact, many of them were downright self-righteous, with the old "guns don't kill people, people kill people" mantra.  I'm not sure I'd be so holier-than-thou if I had the deaths of 20 elementary school students on my  watch.

As Mike McIntyre and Michael Luo reported, the attitude of most sellers of guns is who, me?  "The president of Sturm, Ruger was not interested in knowing how often the police traced guns back to the company’s distributors, saying it 'wouldn’t show us anything," the writers related.

And certainly a large swath of the public agrees.  Profit at the company surged 53% in 1Q.

"The world’s firearms manufacturers have been largely silent in the debate over gun violence. But their voices emerge from thousands of pages of depositions in a series of liability lawsuits a decade ago, before Congress passed a law shielding them from such suits in 2005, and the only time many of them were forced to answer such questions," the story went on.      

Charles Guevremont, the president of the gun manufacturer Browning, testified that his company "would have no reason to review the practices of a dealer who was the subject of numerous trace requests." Ironically, due to the strength of the gun lobby, there are even fewer tracing data laws on the books today than in the 1990s

Gun executives claimed not to know (or care?) whether their guns had been used in any crimes, according to the story.  Even the theoretical event of one person buying dozens of guns at one time didn't stir them a jot.

General counsel of Beretta U.S.A., Jeffrey Reh told The New York Times last week, "Beretta U.S.A.’s position is and has always been that the purchase by an individual of multiple firearms is not, in and of itself, evidence of improper or suspicious behavior.”

Sadly, we keep hearing the same old tired P.R. bullets.


  •   "We're not in law enforcement."
  •   "If the laws were enforced more strongly, there would be no problems with guns."  
  •   And, of course, "Guns don't kill people. People kill people."

I feel pretty depressed about the whole thing.  Supposedly Congress is going to resurrect the background check debacle but attention is already being diverted to other much more important inquiries, like Benghazi and the IR. >:\

So it's back to wait and see.  I just pray in the meantime, no more guns -- I mean people -- kill any more children.

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