It’s an all too common refrain. Every time a criminal or a wacko (or a criminal wacko) kills someone using a firearm, every branch of the Civilian Disarmament Industrial Complex jumps into action and cries out in unison that the problem, of course, is the guns.
If only guns were outlawed, their “reasoning” goes, outlaws wouldn’t have guns. The logic seems so clear. Never mind the delusionally utopian absurdity of thinking that a government that’s been fighting spectacularly expensive and unsuccessful wars on drugs and poverty for the last 60-plus years can somehow make over 400 million firearms go away. Or legislate them out of existence.
The People of the Gun have a simple, rote retort to that kind of lazy stupidity…guns don’t kill people, people kill people.
Neither side is about to change many minds, so it’s a battle that will continue ad infinitum, no matter how many crimes are prevented and lives saved by the lawful use of civilian-owned firearms every year.
Given the fact that the Gun Control Industry™ is and has been losing this battle for a couple of decades now, they’ve tried some new tacks in their desperate attempts to make gun ownership more difficult and expensive. One of which is to sue the makers and sellers of guns and ammunition after high profile shootings. No matter how regulated the industry may already be and the extent to which any particular transaction complied with every applicable law, attorneys — usually backed by the gun control orgs — try to sue everyone involved.
The People of the Gun have a retort for this, too, pointing out that going after a gun manufacturer is like suing the maker of spoons for making people fat. Or suing the maker of a car when it’s involved in a drunk driving accident.
Now, in the latest news of the devolution of civil society, it now apparently makes legal sense — to some great minds, anyway — to sue the makers of cars that are frequently being stolen. And it probably shouldn’t surprise you to learn that this novel, groundbreaking approach is being pioneered in Chicago.
From the Sun-Times . . .
The city of Chicago sued Kia and Hyundai on Thursday, alleging the South Korean automakers have fueled a “car theft crisis” by failing to install standard technology they knew was effective at deterring thieves.
The companies failed to use the anti-theft technology for years, leading to a spike in thefts that was driven by a viral trend showing just how easy it was to swipe their cars, according to the lawsuit filed in Cook County.
The number of car thefts has more than doubled in Mogadishu on Lake Michigan year over year and the Sun-Times reports that about half of the cars stolen were Kias and Hyundais. So the design of the the Korean cars may well be less than ideal. But isn’t the real story here the people who are, you know, stealing the cars? Aren’t they the ones the city should be focusing on here?
Oh, wait. We forgot. Chicago is a big blue city that’s dominated by “progressive” politics including an ongoing re-think of its criminal justice system. The city’s Soros-backed prosecutor is so far left that even she has decided to head for the exit rather than run for reelection and try to defend the indefensible (her record).
Then again, Chicago voters just made a very clear choice at the ballot box. They had the option of choosing a candidate who campaigned on restoring some semblance of law and order in a city ravaged by four years under a feckless, failed mayor, and another candidate who thought that what the the City of Big Shoulders needs most is to lurch even further to the left and excuse even more criminality.
And that, dear reader, is how you get a decision to sue a couple of auto makers in a city that’s racked by crime rather than trying to hold the people who are actually stealing their products responsible.
While no one in the gun industry is likely to voice the sentiment, we don’t have to be as reticent about saying these kinds of things out loud. So to Kia and Hyundai…welcome to the party, pals. This is what it’s liked to be blamed when your products are stolen, abused, misused, and involved in crimes for which you were in no way involved or responsible.
This is the pass we’ve come to in American politics. We no longer blame and incarcerate criminals for breaking even the most basic and common-sense laws. Instead, we blame those who make and sell the products those criminals desire, steal and use to break the law.
And so it goes.
