SUPREME COURT REFUSES TO BLOCK LAWSUIT AGAINST GUN MANUFACTURER BY FAMILIES OF SANDY HOOK CHILDREN (USA Today)
WASHINGTON – The Supreme Court refused Tuesday to shield a major arms manufacturer from potential liability in the 2012 school shooting that left 26 students and educators dead in Newtown, Conn.
The justices' action allows a lawsuit filed by parents of Sandy Hook Elementary School victims to move forward at the state level, on the allegation that Remington Arms marketed the military-style rifle used in the mass shooting "for use in assaults against human beings."
The case tests the reach of a 2005 law passed by Congress to protect firearms manufacturers from being held liable for crimes committed by gun purchasers. That law was hailed by the National Rifle Association, but it included exceptions, including one for violating rules related to marketing and advertising.
Kind of deceptive, you have to read into it a ways to see they're talking about the
Connecticut State Supreme Court, and not the U S Supreme Court.
Even with the CT Court's go-ahead on a lawsuit, that seems to me a very tough needle to thread. You have to prove that the gun manufacturer is directly responsible, despite that they only manufactured the guns, guns that then went through distributors and retailers, that the mom went through a background check and obtained multiple guns legally, that on top of that she trained her son how to use them responsibly.
The obvious responsibility is with the mentally ill son, and the mother who had arms around her son, despite his clear Asbergers autism illness, and his anger at his mother for not being able to adequately care for him herself that made her plan to institutionalize him, that he knew about, that triggered his killing spree, first against his own mother, and then against the students she took care of at school.
To me this is just exploitation by Democrat/Left gun control fanatics. And perhaps judges who are gun control advocates as well.
Gun control advocates have said a victory by the families in the long-running dispute could lead to more lawsuits and damaging disclosures involving the firearms industry.
The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled 4-3 in March that Remington can be sued because of the way the AR-15-style Bushmaster rifle was marketed. The families' lawsuit contends that Remington glorified the gun in advertising aimed at young people, including in violent video games.
The Sandy Hook killer, Adam Lanza, was 20 when he shot and killed his mother at home, then went to the Newtown school and gunned down first-graders and educators. Lanza then killed himself.
I'm just not seeing a basis for a lawsuit here. The mother, not Adam Lanza, purchased the weapons, and went through multiple background checks to purchase each of them. She taught her son responsible use. There is no evidence that Adam Lanza ever saw the ads the families' lawyer cites. Again, a very tough needle to thread. Adam Lanza's motive was mental illness and personal revenge against his mother, not how tha guns were marketed. How the guns were marketed seems irrelevant, since his mother, not Adam Lanza, is the one who bought them. That seems to me to throw the case out of court from the outset.
