Run, Hide, and Fight?! A Precautionary Business Ethics to Hold Manufacturers Accountable for Preventing Gun Violence

Abstract According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 45,000 people died in the United States from gun-related injuries in 2020 (or 124 per day)—up 14% from 2019 and 43% from 2010. Accounting for 13.7 deaths per 100,000 people, the highest rate in nearly three decades, firearms have earned a place among the five leading causes of death for people under 44 years of age. Many have argued that gun violence is not only a public health crisis, but that firearm-related deaths have reached epidemic proportions. Yet, despite these disquieting trends, gun manufacturers continue to appeal to their lack of causal responsibility for gun-related violence—consistently noting that it is people who harm and kill others, not guns per se. This reasoning informs the gun industry’s consistent rejection of moral culpability and legal liability for the harm and death associated with gun violence: a justification that is grounded in traditional theories of moral responsibility and the ethics of risk, which maintain that when an actor’s causal contribution to some harm or impermissible risk of harm cannot be scientifically corroborated, there is no ethical foundation for holding the actor morally responsible. Given the complexity of the problem of gun violence and prevailing uncertainties in our social scientific understanding of its likely causes, industry actors have generally enjoyed immunity from criminal and civil liability. However, is there a plausible justification for holding the gun industry accountable—even if we accept that gun manufacturers avoid culpability on traditional ethical accounts? And if so, what would this standard consist in? While the focus of this debate has centered on retroactively assigning liability to gun manufacturers for the harm and loss their products have created, this paper underscores the importance of proactively holding the firearms industry accountable for preventing the harm and loss in the first place. By applying my recently published theory of precautionary ethics to this pressing problem of business ethics and social justice, this paper aims to raise the standard of corporate social responsibility by arguing that businesses have substantive duties of due care to strive to safeguard the public against possibilities of gun-related injuries and deaths (which the gun industry has routinely failed to heed).