Gun Makers Shun Responsibility for Sales, Suits Show - NYTimes.com

George W. Bush signing the 2005 law that granted immunity to gunmakers

I have long argued for a theory of product liability called product stewardship.  It holds that manufacturers have a duty to follow their products, see how they are actually being used, the adverse and beneficial effects, and make safety changes as warranted by the evidence.  It was developed in response to the Vioxx cases which demonstrated the pharmaceutical industry's cavalier experimentation with the health of the consumers of their drugs.  
The idea is apt for gun makers who spun safety locks and the like.  Unfortunately those who call the shots in Congress have virtually closed the door on such actions via the 2005  Protection of Lawful Commerce in Firearms Act.  John Culhane and Jean Eggen have been sounding the alarm on that for years. - GWC: Gun Makers Shun Responsibility for Sales, Suits Show - 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.

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Full Text: Progress in China's Human Rights in 2012 (5) - CHINA - Globaltimes.cn

Everything said in this new official report is true.  But the infrastructure - the agencies and institutions - charged with enforcing and realizing the commitments lag far behind the laws, which remain skeletal, enforced by institutionally weak, under-financed, and inexperienced courts. - GWC
Full Text: Progress in China's Human Rights in 2012 (5) - CHINA - Globaltimes.cn:

China continues to improve its legal system that protects human rights. Establishing a socialist legal system with Chinese characteristics and protecting human rights in accordance with the law are the important foundation for China's human rights development. Thanks to unremitting efforts over the years, by the end of 2010 a multi-level socialist legal system with specific Chinese characteristics had been established. This system is based on the realities of China, adapts to the needs of reform and opening up and the socialist modernization drive, epitomizes the will of the Communist Party of China and the Chinese people, centers around the Constitution, takes as its mainstay the Constitution-related laws, civil and commercial laws, administrative laws, economic laws, social laws, criminal laws, and litigation and non-litigation procedural laws of different categories, and comprises administrative and local regulations. By the end of 2012 China had enacted 243 active laws, including the current Constitution, 721 administrative regulations and 9,200 local regulations, which are complete in range and cover all relations in the society. Basic and major laws of each category have been formulated and supported with corresponding administrative regulations and local regulations, forming a legal system that is internally scientific, well-coordinated and unified.

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