Social Products Liability: The Case of the Firearms Manufacturers

One of the most important and challenging issues of business ethics—or indeed of ethics more generally—is that of “moral responsibility.” And though this problem has been with us from the outset of reflection on ethics and business, the following developments in the late twentieth century have exacerbated its difficulty: the increased mobility among people, the development of increasingly complex technologies with ever more significant consequences, the extension of the distance between people’s actions and the effects of their actions, the extended distance between the manufacturers of products and the consequences of those products, the expanded possibilities for anonymous actions, and the collapse of many customary forms of restraints between both individuals and organizations. As a consequence, I believe, we are in the midst of rethinking and developing new and creative ways of extending our notion of responsibility.