Do gun manufacturers have a duty to prevent violence?
Gun manufacturers have long maintained they aren’t responsible for gun violence—people are. But a new paper byLevente Գٰ쾱á⾱, assistant teaching professor in theSocial Responsibility and Sustainability Division of the Leeds School of Business, challenges that view. In“,” published in theJournal of Business Ethics in July 2025, Գٰ쾱á⾱ argues that companies have a moral duty to prevent harm even when the causes of violence are uncertain. He spoke with CU Boulder Today about his “precautionary ethics” framework and why it’s time to rethink corporate responsibility in the face of America’s gun crisis.
LeventeԳٰ쾱á⾱
What motivated you to explore the ethical responsibilities of gun manufacturers?
Gun violence has become one of the leading causes of death among Americans under 44, yet the debate around responsibility to prevent these deaths remains stuck. Manufacturers routinely claim they can’t be held morally responsible because they don’t directly cause harm—people do. The empirical causes of gun violence are complex, but in response to this dismissive talking point, I wanted to explore whether there’s a moral justification for holding them accountable even if we cannot scientifically prove causal responsibility.
How does your framework differ from traditional risk regulation in the U.S.?
Our current system of risk regulation requires proof of imminent harm before regulation can be justified. My precautionary approach actually returns to pre-1980s risk regulation in the United States and argues that when there is some potential for harm,even ifthe details remain scientifically uncertain, we have justification for acting preventively. Acting proactively is especially important when we consider the welfare of vulnerable community members, like children in our schools and our dedicated first-responders who face disproportionate risk of harm from mass shootings.
You argue that traditional theories of moral responsibility let companies off the hook. How do the “ethics of precaution” change that?
Traditional ethical theories and current public policies governing risk require adequate evidence of likely harmful consequences of a person’s actionsand the probability that harm will occurbefore we can determine if the action poses an “unreasonable” risk to others. It is only if an action constitutes an unreasonable risk that we are morally justified to interfere with the actions of others. But this overlooks numerous possibilities of harm that others may impose on us, for which we lack evidence of the probability and nature of the potential for harm. This leads to a confusing moral standard that under these conditions of uncertainty, we have to wait for an actual harm to occur before we can retroactively work to prevent it.
The ethics of precaution, by contrast, is forward-looking. It holds that even under uncertainty, businesses have duties of due care to takereasonable measures to help to safeguard the public from possible harm. Rather than waiting for proof that a product causes deaths, companies should take reasonable steps to prevent those deaths in the first place.
What would that look like for gun manufacturers?
Duties of due care are reciprocal. The goal isn’t to create unreasonable burdens on gun manufacturers. The idea is to balance the interests and rights of the public not to be exposed to potential gun violence (my focus in this paper is on mass shootings), with the interests and rights of gun manufacturers to engage in production of firearms.
Examples of duties of due care might include measures like redesigning firearms to prevent them from being altered into automatic weapons, investing in smart-gun technologies, implementing stricter distribution controls to vendors, or ending marketing strategies that glorify violence or target vulnerable groups. The goal is not to ban guns but to expect that manufacturers take reasonable precautions to reduce the potential for harm to innocent community members.
The gun industry often argues that broader social factors like mental health or poverty are to blame for violence. How do you respond?
Naturally, the causes of mass shootings are complex and diverse. This makes it very challenging to find common ground to solve this problem, which has become highly politicized and polarized.
Nevertheless, shifting the focus away from what gun manufacturers can reasonably do to prevent mass shootings to other causes is a diversionary tactic that what we’ve historically seen in other industries—like tobacco and vaping, oil, and pharmaceuticals. And if we view corporations as members of our communities, then we should be able to expect them to be part of the solution.
What lessons can other industries take from this argument?
Precautionary ethics raises the bar for corporate responsibility. It asks companies to stop gambling with public welfare just because the empirics aren’t settled.
What do you hope policymakers and the public take away from your work?
That moral responsibility doesn’t begin and end with direct causation. Even in uncertainty, businesses have a duty not to expose the public to potential and preventable harm by acknowledging the interests of the communities that are affected by their business practices.
In this spirit of equality and reciprocity, it is essential that we respect each other and find common ground to collaboratively work to address the pressing issue of gun violence in our communities.