“The best hope for America is for the adults in the room to stop believing the mythical fairy tales about the Big Bad Gun-Industry Troll, and start focusing on holding accountable those who actually commit violent crimes with firearms.”
KEY TAKEAWAYS
Myth #1: Congress gave the gun industry special protections that make it completely immune from all liability.
Myth #2: The gun industry makes enormous profits off of criminal violence and should therefore be forced to “foot the bill” for its costs.
Myth #3: Gun-industry advertisements incite criminal activity and contribute to mass shootings.
A decades-old gun-control narrative has been resurging in recent months, sweeping across the national scene in everything from celebrity Twitter accounts to The Atlantic magazine articles to congressional hearings.
The story’s plotline goes something like this: The gun industry is a nefarious actor that profits off of the “gun violence” it facilitates by marketing its lethal products to other bad actors. This industry is this generation’s “Big Tobacco,” waging a deadly disinformation campaign on the American public, but Congress gave it special protections from civil liability so it can’t be held accountable for any wrongdoing. We need to repeal these protections, sue the gun manufacturers and sellers into oblivion (or at least into compliance with our preferred gun-control policies) and force them to “foot the bill” for “gun violence,” just like we made tobacco companies compensate states for smoking-related medical costs.
This narrative makes for a great bedtime story in gun-control circles; it comes complete with a villainous troll blocking the bridge to “common-sense gun safety,” which must be slain for the good of the nation.
By Amy Swearer
