2015-2020, there were at least 2070 unintentional
shootings by Children, 765 of those Children died.
A consumer product that causes this much harm to the public would normally be
subject to a recall.
But federal law prohibits the consumer product safety commission, the agency
responsible for protecting the public from dangerous products from regulating guns.
This is absurd.
After one child died using a peloton treadmill last year,
the Consumer Product Safety Commission intervened and recalled the product.
But when hundreds of Children die using guns, there is no federal response,
there is no federal safety standard for guns.
Even though 40,000 Americans hurt or kill themselves or
other people in hundreds of accidents every year, instead of regulating guns
like any other consumer product, Federal law protects gun manufacturers.
A teenager can watch a video online and
learn how to modify a rifle to make it more deadly.
And the gun industry avoids any liability if that teenager uses that modified
rifle to fire repeatedly and rapidly at innocent people.
Even though their products could be designed to prevent unsafe modifications.
>> 100%, Katie Porter makes all the sense in the world and
I love that she's focusing on this.
From the point of view of these are products that, the right wants to say,
we're trying to infringe too much on them.
No, what she is pointing out is they among all products in the country of every sort,
you can imagine have this special carve out where there can be no expectations
that they're anything other than deadly at the drop of a pin.
At any given second, they are deadly.
We did a story on the show just yesterday where a two year old came across
a handgun and accidentally shot and killed his father.
A two year old could pull back the trigger on that gun.
That is a choice that was made by the gun manufacturers.
You think it's not impossible to make it require more force or
to make it impossible.
If you can make pill bottles that two year old can't open,
you think they couldn't secure a trigger in the same way?
No, they've chosen not to and
you can't sue them based on the fact that their weapons are so
deficient that two year old can operate them because of this special carve out.
Now, she is gonna give a specific example of how this works in practice and
what comes as a result of it in this video.
>> I wanna give an example.
In 2001, a 13 year old boy named Billy accidentally shot his father's handgun and
killed his friend Josh.
Billy mistakenly thought the gun was unloaded because he had removed the guns
magazine.
Josh's family sued the gun manufacturer for failing to warn Billy and
other consumers that their product could be fired without a magazine.
It's a simple case,
it should have been decided by a jury as is provided under the constitution.
Instead, because of the gun industry's immunity,
the gun manufacturer was able to dismiss the case without a trial.
If a pharmaceutical company failed to warn customers about the known risks of one of
their drugs, they could face thousands of lawsuits.
But we allow the gun industry to sell weapons without taking any precautions to
protect Children and families from fatal accidents.
>> This is what they can get away with.
Very reasonable things to assume about a gun are not true and don't have to be true
and if it results in someone's death, they can't be held liable for Jordan.
It's an amazing system that they've set up in their defense.
>> I can't believe this is even a structure that we willingly live
within because no other country has this.
And you look at some of the other things that have been banned,
she's talking from a consumer safety standpoint, which I think is
a good argument because it gets away from the Second Amendment framework.
And you just think about it as a consumer product,
which it is how different it is than any other product.
The treadmill I thought was a really good example,
the most famous example is lawn darts,
people love to point out how lawn darts were immediately banned, metal tipped.
And some of the other things I was looking at recently are just like almost
kind of funny a cabbage patch kid doll that would like eat fake food.
It got recalled because it was eating people's hair.
The kinder surprise eggs, kids were choking on those but
also look at like furniture that tips over.
And one of the things I think recently that might appeal to you and
your audience, do you remember the Grand theft Auto San Andreas game?
They had a meltdown over that because of the hot coffee mode
>> [CROSSTALK]
>> Where you can.
I've never watched that.
>> But like that it was a game meant for adults and they were horrified that a kid
could access some like really low rendered, virtual sex scene in the game.
And immediately swift action as soon as they found that that wasn't found out
that was in the game because potentially it could harm kids in some way, but
kids can get mutilated by a weapon of war and suddenly their hands are tied,
they don't care.
And that just boggles my mind that we willingly live in this society.
>> Yeah, and look, you're right to point out all the times as Katie Porter is
where we discovered that something could be dangerous and
quickly regulate the whole thing.
Recalls of millions of cars or
millions of strollers because something it has been shown to be dangerous.
But let's talk about things that just aren't,
I'm actually not even sure of the laws in the state that you're in.
Are you allowed to buy marijuana?
>> I don't smoke, I think so.
Okay, well, many of the people watching in states across America can't, there didn't
have to be any leap into action because people died from, there was no death.
You can't do it.
It's inherently too dangerous to smoke marijuana.
It's totally banned in many states, that is inherently too dangerous.
But AR fifteens are inherently so important,
it doesn't matter that they're dangerous.
You can't even regulate them.
They're not even trying to ban them in the house.
They're literally just saying you should be 21, when you turn 21 in the states,
you can't smoke marijuana.
You could be a 60 year old Vietnam vet who
was firing machine guns off the side of a helicopter.
You're not responsible enough in the eyes of these republicans to be able to smoke
a particular plant.
There are other plants that you're allowed to smoke.
You can't smoke this plant because it's inherently too dangerous.
We live in an insane country ruled by mad men and women.
That's what we do here in America.
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