This paper deals with the relationship between legal responsibility and causation. I argue that legal responsibility is not necessarily rooted in causation. The general claim I aim to disprove is that responsibility is descriptive because it is fundamentally rooted in causality, and causality is metaphysically real and founded. My strategy is twofold. First, I show (in §1) that there are significant and independent non- causal form of responsibility that cannot be reduced to causal responsibility; second, in §2, I show that (...) the very notion of causality is— lato sensu—not plainly descriptive. I will suggest that even causation is tied to evaluative elements, contrary to what is assumed by many theorists and practitioners working in normative domains. (shrink)

I offer a new proposal to prevent some of the harms of gun violence in the United States. First, I argue that gun violence is a negative externality of gun production, on an analogy with industrial pollution. Second, I outline a law that the United States might use to internalize the violent costs of gun production. This law would provide a financial incentive for gun manufacturers to reduce gun violence in whatever legally permissible way they can, not necessarily by reducing (...) the prevalence of gun ownership. Thus, strictly speaking, my proposal would be a form of gun violence control, not gun control per se. Third, I show that this approach to controlling gun violence avoids the three main pro-gun-rights arguments: the Consequentialistic Argument, the Moral Rights Argument, and the Legal Rights Argument. I conclude by explaining why even libertarians should have few principled objections to my proposal. (shrink)