The saving " grace " for firearms, even those made overseas, is that we now use steel, and steel is now being made in large foundries, in huge batches to keep the costs down. It is NOT made in small, mom and pop shops. It may be used in those shops, but the basic raw steel is manufacturered in plants that do have quality control. The Firearms market, even in India, is way too small to have steels made ONLY for that purpose.
The end result is that the guns made there are usually safe because of the steel used in the barrels, and the low pressures generated by true Black Powder. If a lot of imported guns were blowing up and injuring Ameicans, restrictions on those imports would be imposed. That threat allows American standards to affect positively the work done overseas.
Our Product Liability Laws, a creation of Judicial Activism in the 1960s, are not applied to foreign manufacturers. Better ways to protect consumers were found shortly thereafter, by Congress, and state legislatures. The Product Liability doctrine created by our Supreme Court to hold manufacturers and all subsequent members of the " chain of sale " responsible for injuries and deaths arising out of defective products( Stretching the " Foreseeability" doctrine in Tort law to its most illogical conclusion) still remains.
{ I still believe a 10 year Sunset Provision for all laws passed at both the State and Federal level should be the subject of a new constitutional amendment, so that our government has to re-examine laws every ten years to see if they are actually doing the good intended to be done, and decide if there isn't a better way to accomplish the intended purpose.]
I had a Tort Professor named Jeff O'Connell, who was famous in the 1960s for his books on "Tort Reform", where he was trying to socialize civil litigation by removing Fault as an element to be proved by Plaintiffs to recover damages for their injuries. Our legal system didn't go that far, but we are saddled with Comparative negligence standards in most states, and with Product Liability laws, that raise the cost of all American made goods, without any real recognizable benefit to consumers.
We do get warnings now, that tell us that HOT coffee is ---- HOT?*#@**??!!----- and that we can suffer burns if we pour it over ourselves. And, I saw a sticker on the new lawn mower that reminds me that the blade is rotating and can cut things that get under the mower housing!
Other than these " Here's your sign " stupid warnings, and the smiles we all get when we learn of yet another device that warns us that it does something its expected to do, I have to wonder if Comic Relief is the original goal of those Justices. The higher costs of goods, the jobs lost overseas from this country, the difficulty competing with the cost of production of other countries to produce goods and services here in America are all the downside of these " reforms!"
If "Contributory Stupidity"[Here's your sign!] were allowed as a defense to manufacturers in our current Product Liability law, many of the outrageous judgments that have crippled Industry in our country would not exist, and sanity might return to this body of law. :hmm: :thumbsup:
