Gun control has been a recent new issue that if not taken care of properly will either aid or
diminish many businesses that sell and manufacture firearms. Due to the rising issues that
have been happening this year with mass shootings and crime. A lot of people are now
weighing in on stricter laws on gun control.
President Biden and his administration stated that one of their goals is. "First, the final rule
ensures that firearms with split receivers are subject to regulations requiring serial numbers
and background checks when purchased from a licensed dealer, manufacturer or importer."
Which I completely stand for and I also believe that the age to legally own a semi
automatic rifle should be raised from 18 to 21. While there is no true age as to when a
person fully matures, it has shown when you are 18 you not as mature as you would be at
21 or even 25. The legal age to purchase a handgun is 21, just like to buy alcohol. While
we are not certain that raising the age to 21 to be able buy an AR-15 or AK-47 will lower
mass shootings or crime rate, it may help. If the age does raise to 21 or the government
does require that ghost guns are to be traced by serial numbers. This would affect gun shops
and manufactures across the nation and importers.
The recent issue that has been experienced by a business in the United States and also
covered by the news is the issues related to the illegal telemarketing calls. The customers
have a complaint that they are getting fake and illegal telemarketing calls related to the
covid-19 pandemic that is increasing the fear of the virus among the people as well as
spreading messages including the tech support scams and credit card interest rate reduction.
The recorded messages related to the services of air duct cleaning that filter out the covid-
19 virus is spreading out the illegal telemarketing calls, which is violating the
Telemarketing Sales Rule (TSR) (The United States Department of Justice, 2022). On April
26, 2022, the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) decided to take some action against these
fake and illegal telemarketing calls. It has decided to take some strict action against the
owners of the firms and service providers of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) for
facilitating and assisting the transmission of millions of fake and illegal prerecorded
telemarketing robocalls or scam calls to consumers across the world (FTC takes action to
stop voice over internet provider from facilitating illegal telemarketing robocalls. Federal
Trade Commission, 2022). For the resolution of this issue, it is important to understand the
application of the law and constitution. The legislative rules related to FTC’s Telemarketing
Sales Rule (TSR) are helpful to combat telemarketing fraud, which defends against
unscrupulous telemarketers, provides consumers added privacy protections, and helps the
consumers to explain the difference between legitimate and fraudulent telemarketing. I was
recently reading about a lawsuit against Round-Up. The story was based out of Florida,
which is where I reside currently. The lawsuit was about the chemicals they put in their
products causing cancer. It is actually was used a lot in our orange groves when round up
first came out. The lawsuit states that chemicals that are used in Round-Up are banned in
some other countries and that the company failed to let E.P.A know that their chemicals
where being banned. The lawyer that was on the prosecution, said that by failing to notify
E.P.A of the other nations banning it is failed to protect its consumers over here in the
states. After this lawsuit came out many other people came forward with their issues that
could have been caused by the same chemicals that were used in Round-Up. I feel with all
these people getting cancer because they used Round-Up for prolonged periods of time that
the company will face a bunch of back lash. They could also possibly owe millions of
dollars to the consumers they hurt. An issue I read about in the news recently faced by the
chemical maker TPC group was about a fire in 2019 that led to major debt and
bankruptcies. The fire cost the company 1.3 billion dollars in secured debt and has led them
to file for chapter 11 bankruptcy, with a plan to eliminate 950 million of the debt. The
chemical company manufactures petrochemicals butane and butadiene and is still active
with repairing the damages and debt due to the fire and explosions. "The company faces
federal and state investigations over the Port Neches fire, and is in negotiations with a
committee representing some 7,000 claims for property damage, business interruption and
personal injury, according to court filings." (Feast 2022)
Along with the fire the company also experienced a financial loss due to the pandemic and
a winter storm. Having those compelling reasons for a bankruptcy would be more
convincing to a court. The company is proposing to hand over control to its lenders and has
struggled with legal claims. The company is facing federal and state investigations into the
fire. They are in negotiations with a committee for property damage, business interruption
and personal injury. The case is U.S. Bankruptcy Court, District of Delaware, No. 22-
10493. (Feast, 2022)
The law is applied into this resolution by investigating claims on a state and federal level
and applying the the constitutional right to file for bankruptcy. According to "United States
Courts" (n.d.), "Article I, Section 8, of the United States Constitution authorizes Congress
to enact "uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies." (para. 1). The U.S. Constitution
forbids the government from restricting freedom of speech, but the Constitution does not
apply to companies or individuals that are not agents of the government. A private
corporation or other private party does not have to allow certain opinions to be expressed
on its website, except to the extent, if any, that a statute or other law might require it to do
so. As an example, if you had a blog that allowed people to post comments, you would be
free to delete any comment that you did not like.But, of course, it is a problem that so much
of the content on the internet is controlled by only a very small number of very large
corporations who try to suppress information and opinions that do not fit their agenda.
In March 2021 there was a new development in the Volkswagen emissions scandal. U. S.
authorities had charged Volkswagen with committing fraud by rigging diesel-powered
vehicles in such a way as to cheat the emissions test. Volkswagen later tried to cover up the
cheat. Volkswagen pleaded guilty in the U. S. in 2017 to settle criminal charges for around
$4.3 billion. The company also agreed to pay billions of dollars in compensation to
hundreds of thousands of U.S. owners of Volkswagen and Audi vehicles.
In an unusual move Volkswagen has said that it will seek compensation from a former
CEO of Volkswagen and from a former CEO of its Audi unit. The two men are also facing
charges of fraud in Germany but they deny involvement in the fraud. Volkswagen says that
they failed to take appropriate action to address the problem. (Boston, 2021)
I have recently heard about a company named Meta, a social metaverse company was sued
by Paxton, a technology company because the Metaverse has been using face recognition to
inappropriately record peoples biometrics without their consent. As expected Meta verse
denied these claims and stated that they will ban the facial recognition software however it
want used for the purposes of collecting biometrics but instead to make the Metaverse more
realistic. Although the case is still in the process;" Nevertheless, we are taking this step to
prevent meritless and distracting litigation under laws in these two states based on a
mischaracterization of how our features work. We remain committed to delivering AR
experiences that people love, and that a diverse roster of creators use to grow their
businesses, without needless friction or confusion,” according to ABC News. Meaning that
the conflict became a huge situation to the point where Texas and Illinois will now be
taking preventative measures and banning filters from the entire state. Any media filter that
alters or augments the face will now be banned from the entire state. Due to Texas' facial
recognition laws , Instagram (metas partnering company) will be banning all filters with the
exception color change and Green screen ones. The issue I would like to discuss today is
that of the companies being held responsible for "take-home" Covid 19.I myself have seen
many places that do not hold up their end of the guidelines for employees to prevent the
spread of covid 19. In this case, a woman brought home the virus from her work and
reported that she had to work side by side with sick co-workers during her shifts. The issue
is many companies are trying to prevent the spread but due to the economy and lack of
resources are unable to abide by the regulations put into effect. It is possible that this case
could open up several cases against businesses located in California and pave the way for
how they should be handled. For now, it is up to the family to provide enough evidence to a
judge to determine if the husband's passing was a direct result of his wife having contracted
the virus from work. They can do this by providing enough evidence that the company did
not follow proper covid-19 safety protocols. An issue in the news recently that OSHA dealt
with was the COVID 19 vaccine mandates distributed down from President Biden. He went
back and forth with the public about it being required and it not being required. The
mandate was going to private employers with 100 or more employees the ability to require
vaccines for continued employment or have weekly coronavirus testing completed. It would
have also required all places that received any forms of payment from Medicare or
Medicaid to require their health care workers to be vaccinated.
The constitution does allow the U.S. Government does not have the power to require any
American adult to have a vaccine. The mandate is unconstitutional and there was no way
either sectors would have survived court. OSHA was not intended to fight a pandemic but
to ward off health scares in the workplace. The only mandate they can require drug testing.
The federal government does not have the authority to oversee and require that from public
or private sectors. Because of these issues the mandates were not allowed to be made
mandatory. One of the world's biggest and most popular companies is Walt Disney. Many
of us grew up watching the Disney channel and being a member of the Mickey Mouse
Club. Some of our favorite movies and our children's favorite movies were/ are made by
Disney. People travel far and wide to visit Disney world in Florida. Disney's popularity has
made it one of largest companies and brands in in the United States.
When Disney speaks up the world listens so when it was made known that Governor Ron
DeSantis of Florida was passing a bill to prevent certain lessons being taught to children
Disney spoke against this bill. The bill is titled the "Parental Rights in Education" bill, but
it has been deemed the "Don't Say Gay Bill". The bill prevents education in relation to
gender and sexual identity in the lower levels of grade school. Some would say the bill is
also giving parents the right to control what their children should learn at a young age.
Also, a lot of people feel like the bill is discriminatory against the LGBTQIA community.
Disney in particular felt is if this rule should not apply to them because it is discriminating
against a community of people. The law states that this rule applies to everyone and there is
no company regardless of size that is exempt from the rules. Now, Disney is currently
fighting to prevent this bill from passing and applying to their company and plans to pursue
legal action if this bills harms in any way the LGBTQIA community. (Cole, 2022).
Currently, this bill has been signed and will go in effect as of July 2022. At this time grade
schools third grade and under will be prevented from teaching certain gender/ sexual
lessons or talk. Companies like Disney are still fighting to prevent the bill from being final
and or effecting their brand. The LGBTQIA community is still fighting this bill. Currently,
in the state of Florida there is no resolution where both sides are satisfied or have a
resolution and the future is to be determined on how it will turn out. (Cole, 2022).
References
Cole, Devan (2022). DeSantis signs controversial bill restricting certain LGBTQ topics in
the classroom. https://www.cnn.com/2022/03/28/politics/dont-say-gay-bill-desantis-
signs/index.html
Nash, A. (2022, May 18). Some social media filters have been banned in Texas and
Illinois. here's why. Deseret News. Retrieved June 3, 2022, from
https://www.deseret.com/2022/5/18/23099123/instagram-filters-banned-texas-social-media-
facebook-meta-illinois-lawsuit
Feast , Lincoln (2022). Chemical maker TPC Group files pre-arranged bankruptcy .
https://www.reuters.com/business/energy/chemical-maker-tcp-group-files-pre-arranged-
bankruptcy-2022-06-02/
FTC takes action to stop voice over internet provider from facilitating illegal telemarketing
robocalls. Federal Trade Commission. (2022, April 26). Retrieved June 6, 2022, from
https://www.ftc.gov/news-events/news/press-releases/2022/04/ftc-takes-action-stop-voice-
over-internet-provider-facilitating-illegal-telemarketing-robocalls
The United States Department of Justice. (2022, May 6). Retrieved June 6, 2022, from
https://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/united-states-settles-suit-against-voip-service-providers-
facilitating-millions-illegal
