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Your understanding about how this works is incorrect, I think that's the problem. If a product being sold is primarily being used for a purpose which violates
by ericmay 5mo ago
Your understanding about how this works is incorrect, I think that's the problem.
If a product being sold is primarily being used for a purpose which violates the law and does not otherwise have fair usage the government can and has pursued and won legal cases resulting in the product being banned. That is no different here. The reason for interviewing consumers is to help determine what the product is being used for to help inform the legal case. It may turn out that it's primarily used for fair usage or "practical" purposes which don't violate the law and the DOJ may drop their case. It may turn out everyone is using these to violate the Clean Air Act in which case it will likely and should be banned.
> A roll of duct tape isn't a different product when it's being used in the commission of a crime.
If the vast majority of the time the roll of duct tape was used in the commission of a crime, it absolutely could and likely would be banned.
- AnthonyMouse 5mo ago> If the vast majority of the time the roll of duct tape was used in the commission of a crime, it absolutely could and likely would be banned. Which continues to be an absurd premise. So if the original use case for duct tape was kidnappings then it should be forever banned because a sample taken at that time had that statistical distribution, and thereafter no other uses can be adopted because it's banned? It seems a lot more reasonable to prosecute kidnappers rather than the makers of generic tools.
- ericmay 5mo ago> It seems a lot more reasonable to prosecute kidnappers rather than the makers of generic tools. As someone who is pro 2nd-Amendment (but not pro-gun) I of course appreciate this argument. There are certainly gray areas. The most immediate example that comes to mind are bongs or other items used for smoking pot (maybe other things? I'm not too sure). Ultimately it comes down to what the government and regulators think, what they can argue in court, and so forth. And if the people don't like it, they can take democratic political action.
- iamnothere 5mo ago> If the vast majority of the time the roll of duct tape was used in the commission of a crime, it absolutely could and likely would be banned. This is the same argument they use in the UK to ban things like long knives or realistic airsoft guns. We don’t really do that here in the US. Activists often try, but eventually the laws get struck down.
- ericmay 5mo agoI'm not entirely familiar with the arguments used by the UK, but in the US neither long knives or realistic airsoft guns are used for wide scale law-breaking. That would probably be the key difference.