Guns: A Dealer's Responsibility (sue em out of existence.....)

Christian Science Monitor ^ | 4-5-05

[Dan from Michigan]

Guns: A Dealer's Responsibility

The Monitor's View

Gun violence remains a national tragedy. Look no further than the recent Columbine-style shootings in Red Lake, Minn. The FBI reports gun deaths in the US are rising - 14 percent between 1999 and 2003. Eight children a day are killed in this country by guns, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

Yet even with such startling figures, and just six months after Congress shamefully allowed the assault weapons ban to expire, the National Rifle Association (NRA) remains committed to supporting bills now pending in the House and Senate that would grant broad immunity from liability in civil lawsuits to gun manufacturers and dealers. Sen. Jack Reed (D) of Rhode Island rightly calls that "an unprecedented blanket protection that no other industry enjoys." And worse, the bills apparently are on a fast track, with a vote expected soon.

Both measures should fail.

One of the many problems with the bills: They include granting immunity to gun dealers who are reckless, some of whom even supply the criminal gun market. What's more, the civil damages claim brought by the families of victims in the 2002 D.C.-area sniper shootings could not have moved forward had these bills been law.

The gun dealer who allowed the sniper to get an assault rifle paid $2 million in compensation to the victims families' when the case was settled, and the manufacturer paid half a million. The company that manufactured the gun agreed to improve its dealers' sales practices - to help prevent criminals from obtaining guns - an effort they'd not made before.

Further, the gun used in those shootings came from a Washington-State gun shop, which had no record of the sale or a background check, neither had it reported the gun missing. US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (ATF) audits showed the shop had somehow "lost" 238 other guns over a three-year period. Hardly a frivolous matter.

Not all gun dealers, of course, are reckless, but the ATF reports over half of all guns used in crimes are purchased from just 1 percent of gun dealers. Clearly, they don't deserve the protection these bills would provide.

The NRA's political action committee and employees gave more than $1.15 million in the last election cycle; most of it to Republicans. If Congress passes these bills, members voting for them send yet another signal that they can be swayed by special interests.

The Senate wisely rejected the House-approved measure last year. Nothing about the gun-violence issue has changed since then to compel them to change that decision

[Dan from Michigan]

Here we go again.......

[Quixotical]

Yeah, here we go again is right. This should be interesting.

[cryptical]

Gun violence remains a national tragedy. Look no further than the recent Columbine-style shootings in Red Lake, Minn.

That's right, sue the gun shop that sold a gun to a police officer...

[Gunslingr3]

If Congress passes these bills, members voting for them send yet another signal that they can be swayed by special interests.

Cool, I'm 'special'...

[Starve The Beast]

Eight children a day are killed in this country by guns, according to the Centers for Disease Control.

"Excuse me, Sarah Brady, does the CDC keep statistics on how many times a day guns are used in defense of honest citizens?"

By these peoples' logic, we should get rid of automobile air bags... after all, they kill kids!

[MacDorcha]

"Not all gun dealers, of course, are reckless, but the ATF reports over half of all guns used in crimes are purchased from just 1 percent of gun dealers. Clearly, they don't deserve the protection these bills would provide."

Wouldn't that mean that half of the guns aren't bought from ANY gun dealers?

That would imply that half the crimes can be stopped by ::gasp:: going after criminals!

And all the while, no one would be preventing law-abiding citizens from getting guns either.

An armed society is a polite society.

An unarmed society is waiting for an overlord.

[1066AD]

Can't the "rogue" 1% be dealt with as necessary under existing law ?
Can't dealers who break the law lose their licenses ?
Surely any new law such as this would not apply to a dealer who wasn't following the law ?

[MacDorcha]

We're (all of us conservatives) are exhibiting one fatal flaw when we address gun control freaks- we're using logic and reason.

Making sense gets nowhere with the overly fearful.

[squidward]

"Eight children a day are killed in this country by guns, according to the Centers for Disease Control."

How many kids per day drown in the bathtub, or choke to death while eating dinner? Get real people.

[Myrddin]

Why not sue car dealers everytime someone has an accident? Sue the car manufacturers for creating such a dangerous product. Cars can kill in the hands of a careless or malicious person. Any law that can be pressed against a gun dealer or manufacturer can be applied against ANY dealer or manufacturer of ANY product. The consequence of such legal exposure is the loss of those products, manufacturers and dealers. I don't think we are ready to implode in that fashion.

[KingofQue]

We need people to bring lawsuits against gun control advocates everytime someone is killed because they don't have a gun because of the legislation they have supported.

[skeptoid]

"Eight children a day are killed in this country by guns, according to the Centers for Disease Control."

I think "children" may be defined as 18 years or maybe even 19 or 21. Eighteen-year-old two-hundred-fifty pound monster gang-banging, drugging, robbing, raping, terrorizing "children" carrying guns are dying of gunshot wounds, for example. What's the definition of a child in this case?

[TheDon]

CSM supports only arming criminals? Who knew?

[Ain Soph Aur]

"Eight children a day are killed in this country by guns, according to the Centers for Disease Control."

Anyone mind telling me what the hell the CDC is doing monitoring guns? You've got libs all over the place yelling that the administration isn't supporting medical research, yet they're not making a peep about the fact that the primary government institute for medical research is preaching gun control instead. That level of stupidity and hypocrisy from the libs and the CDC (which appears to be run by libs, so I might have been redundant right there) flat-out irks me.

[TorahTrueJew]

Same reason my doctor, only my medical history form, asks me if I own guns and if I keep them locked up. The entire medical profession has gone away from healing and are a bunch of political hacks. There are some exceptions (individual doctors), but the medical community as a whole is obsessed with politics. The only things they see fit to do "medically" seem to be knowing when it's okay to kill someone (babies in-utero, disabled babies, disabled adults, old people, etc). No surprise they're spending all their time trying to disarm the public as well.

[ctdonath2]

used in crimes are purchased from just 1 percent of dealers.

Ummm...maybe that's because so few purchases are misused. If there's 100 dealers, and only one purchase is misused, then that's just 1 percent of dealers involved.

There's some 200,000,000 in the USA. Less than 10,000 are used criminally annually. Figure in a 20 year product lifespan (lost/broken/discarded/forever-in-sock-drawer/deep-storage/whatever), and about 0.1% are criminally misused ever. Throw in some reasonable non-malicious statistical clustering, consider somewhere around 100,000 dealers, and you most likely end up with crime-related sales linked to somewhere around 1% of dealers. A miniscule number of crime-minded dealers - not protected by this legislation at all - then skew those numbers firmly down to 1%.

That "1% of dealers" line is another example of how to lie with statistics.

[ctdonath2]

Heh. My cardiologist used to act that way ... until 9/11, after which he asked me what he should get (Mossberg 590, of course...).

[ctdonath2]

Stats are: kids are 5 times as likely to drown in a 5 gallon bucket of water.

(Which led to a goofy sight someplace I worked: a "child drowning warning" icon on a 5-gallon bucket ... permanently attached to the top of a 4-foot industrial test machine ... behind a locked door ... in an access-controlled industrial building ... surrounded by a mile of wheat fields ... far from any children. Kinda in the same category as having braille on drive-up ATMs. But I digress.)

[ctdonath2]

Correct. Criminally malicious dealers are not protected by this law. Dealers would be protected only insofar as a Ford dealer can't be sued for selling a car used as a bank robbery getaway vehicle.

[R. Scott]

Sue the maker and dealer of any vehicle used in a crime.
Sue the maker and dealer of any computer used in a crime.
Sue the grower, distributor and seller of any foodstuff that causes and illness or death.
Put everyone out of business.
</ sarcasm>