Heroes of Uncertainty - NYTimes.com

The Glock ex­ec­u­tive tes­ti­fied that he would keep do­ing busi­ness with a gun deal­er who had been in­dict­ed on a charge of vi­o­lat­ing firearms laws be­cause “This is still Amer­ica” and “You’re still in­no­cent un­til proven guilty.”

The pres­i­dent of Sturm, Ruger was not in­ter­est­ed in know­ing how of­ten the po­lice traced guns back to the com­pa­ny’s dis­trib­u­tors, say­ing it “wouldn’t show us any­thing.”

And a top ex­ec­u­tive for Tau­rus In­ter­na­tion­al said his com­pa­ny made no at­tempt to learn if deal­ers who sell its prod­ucts were in­volved in gun traf­fick­ing on the black mar­ket. “I don’t even know what a gun traf­fick­er is,” he said.

The world’s firearms man­u­fac­tur­ers have been largely si­lent in the de­bate over gun vi­o­lence. But their voices emerge from thou­sands of pages of de­po­si­tions in a se­ries of li­abil­ity law­suits a dec­ade ago, be­fore Con­gress passed a law shield­ing them from such suits in 2005, and the on­ly time many of them were forced to an­swer such ques­tions.

Heroes of Uncertainty - NYTimes.com