An Illinois doctor who wants to make gun manufacturers pay for the criminal misuse of their products has found some new allies in his quest to make the firearms industry pay for violent crime.
Dr. Anthony Douglas, a surgical resident at the University of Chicago Medical Center, has spent almost two years pushing the so-called Responsibility in Firearm Legislation (RIFL) Act, which would force gun makers to pay into a state fund based on how often their firearms are recovered in connection with shootings. Now the American Medical Association has embraced the same basic idea, adopting a new policy calling on gun manufacturers to shoulder some of the financial costs associated with firearm injuries and deaths.
Douglas and his allies insist that its only fair to make the industry pay for the damage caused by its products. But there's an enormous difference between holding a company responsible for selling a defective product and making it financially liable when a criminal deliberately misuses a perfectly functioning firearm.
That distinction doesn't seem to matter much to the AMA, which is now lending its considerable influence to a proposal that could make exercising our Second Amendment rights much more difficult and expensive.
Dr. Melissa Garretson, a member of the AMA board of trustees, called gun violence “a public health crisis whose heartbreaking consequences are borne by patients, families, communities and taxpayers.”
“Firearm manufacturers should share responsibility for those costs,” Garretson said in a press release. “Requiring them to contribute can help fund evidence-based prevention efforts and encourage greater investment in firearm safety."
Supporters of the measure in the AMA House of Delegates meeting this week likened firearm maker restitution payments to the financial liability judgments against large tobacco and opioid makers for the public harm caused by smoking and addiction, respectively.
Funds raised through such payments, according to the organization’s press release, could go toward supporting evidence-based violence prevention efforts and services for communities disproportionately affected by gun violence.
Yes, violent crime imposes enormous costs on victims, their families, and society as a whole. But why should a company that manufactures and sells a perfectly legal product be held financially responsible when a criminal decides to misuse it?
The AMA's comparison to tobacco and opioid manufacturers is inane. Those companies faced lawsuits alleging deceptive marketing, concealment of health risks, and other misconduct. The AMA, on the other hand, seems to believe that gun makers should have to pay simply because their products are sometimes used to commit crimes.
If a gun maker breaks the law or knowingly sells a defective product, by all means hold it accountable. But making Smith & Wesson or Glock pay every time some violent predator, armed citizen, or police officer pulls a trigger and injures or kills someone is a very different proposition.
I've seen nothing that indicates the AMA differentiates between an injury caused by a criminal using a gun and one caused by a member of law enforcement discharging their firearm, or an armed citizen protecting themselves or others. That question is worth asking, though. Does the organization believe that a gun manufacturer should be financially penalized when its product is used to save an innocent person's life?
Regardless, these costs wouldn't come out of corporate profits. Manufacturers would almost certainly pass at least some of the expense along to consumers, making firearms more expensive for the millions of Americans who purchase them for lawful purposes, including self-defense.
Garretson says the money could fund evidence-based violence prevention programs. If those programs work, lawmakers should be willing to fund them directly and defend that spending to taxpayers. Why impose a special financial burden on a constitutionally protected industry and its law-abiding customers?
There's another question the AMA doesn't seem particularly interested in answering: If a criminal shoots someone with a stolen gun, what exactly did the manufacturer do wrong?
The answer, of course, is nothing. But under the AMA's approach, the company could still end up paying for the criminal's actions.
Imagine if we applied that same standard to the medical profession. Medical errors cause hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths and impose tens of billions of dollars in costs every year. How many members of the AMA's House of Delegates would be willing to reach into their own pockets to compensate patients harmed by mistakes made by other doctors, even when they themselves provided perfectly competent care?
My guess is that the AMA would suddenly discover some very strong objections to holding people financially responsible for someone else's actions. Collective responsibility is a much more appealing idea when somebody else is picking up the tab.