We’ve dealt with the continuing shortage of firearms and ammunition, which is only partly explained by Covid-19 and hoarding. We’ve discussed the attrition of US gun makers, but more needs to be said.
Biden-Harris intend to introduce legislation allowing crime victims to sue gun makers. The result is easy to predict – and intended. American gun makers will close their doors, destroying thousands of jobs. Foreign gun makers with US factories will close these factories, destroying more thousands of jobs. US facilities would make foreign companies vulnerable to US lawsuits.
Similarly, if victims of drunk drivers could sue car makers, Ford, GM, and even Tesla would close their US factories. We would all be driving German, Japanese, Korean, and Italian cars – that is, until cars are banned and we all ride public transit. How we ride public transit in Liberty, Indiana or Buffalo, Wyoming is a problem the urban elite have not considered.
This leads to the next problem. Most US police forces are armed with Glock pistols. Glock is an Austrian firm with a US factory. We can’t allow this factory to close. The US military uses M16 rifles and M4 carbines made by Colt. But Colt was bought by the Czech firm CZ. We can’t allow the Colt factory to close, either. If moronic, lawyer-friendly laws allow suits against gun makers, Glock and CZ could very well withdraw from the US market. This would leave Biden-Harris the unpleasant choice of either:
1) Forcing our military and police to be dependent on arms made overseas, rendering us vulnerable to blockades, work stoppages, or whatever political winds blow in those nations. Or
2) Take over the Glock and Colt factories, with the government producing its own weapons, just as it did throughout most of our history.
As usual, leftists don’t know how to produce anything, and don’t really want to. All they do is spend other people’s money until it runs out, as Maggie Thatcher pointed out. All they do is tax, regulate, and ultimately destroy what others produce. In communist countries, it is agriculture that suffers, causing famines. In the US it will be the firearms industry that first receives their attention, causing shortages of guns and ammunition, which we see already. These shortages affect civilians now, but soon I predict they will affect our police and military.
Leftists have little sympathy for police or military, but they do love power – intensely. So reluctantly, they will allow police and military to retain a reliable supply of weapons, either by taking over the factories, or by allowing arms makers exemption from lawsuits if they make their products available only to police and military, but not to civilians.
Yes, gun control is coming, through the back door and through the front. As Ayn Rand pointed out, we can ignore reality, but we can’t escape the consequences of ignoring reality.
