Posted on 01/04/2002 3:17:15 PM PST by RogueIsland
Today, the Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence hailed Monday's ruling by the Illinois Appellate Court that allows a lawsuit brought by the families of several shooting victims against the gun industry to proceed. The case, Ceriale v. Smith & Wesson Corp. et al., seeks to hold several gun manufacturers and dealers liable for contributing to a public nuisance by making guns readily available to criminals and juveniles.
"This ruling is a stunning blow to the gun industry," said Dennis Henigan, Director of the Brady Center's Legal Action Project. "It has long been known that the gun industry's distribution system functions to fuel the highly-profitable illegal market. This court has laid the legal foundation for holding the industry accountable to the victims of that system. We will soon see the day when the gun industry will no longer be permitted to profit with impunity from conduct that victimizes innocent people."
In the Ceriale case, the families of slain Chicago Police Officer Michael Ceriale and four other victims of unrelated criminal shootings are suing gun manufacturers and distributors for creating a public nuisance by fostering a criminal market that supplies firearms to gang members and juveniles. In November 1999, the Circuit Court of Cook County denied a motion by the defendants to dismiss the case and the gun industry appealed that decision to the Illinois Appellate Court.
In another lawsuit pending in Chicago, Anderson v. Bryco Arms, Brady Center lawyers are making similar legal claims on behalf of the victims of white supremacist Benjamin Nathaniel Smith's racist shooting rampage. These plaintiffs are suing the parties that armed Smith, including the gun manufacturer, an Illinois gun shop, and a gun trafficker. In July 1999, Smith shot 11 people, killing two, including Indiana University graduate student Won-Joon Yoon and former Northwestern University basketball coach Ricky Byrdsong, whose families are among the plaintiffs in this lawsuit.
Smith had been prohibited by law from possessing guns because a domestic violence restraining order had been issued against him. However, he was able to obtain the guns he needed to carry out his assault through the irresponsible actions of a licensed gun dealer, a gun trafficker, and a gun manufacturer who were more than willing to supply him. The manufacturer, Bryco Arms, supplied a corrupt dealer, Old Prairie Trading Post, with all the guns it desired, without limitation or reasonable restrictions as to how or to whom they should be resold. Old Prairie then sold over 60 guns to a gun trafficker, Donald Fiessinger, although it was clear that Fiessinger intended to sell them illegally. After Benjamin Smith was turned away from a gun store after failing a background check, Fiessinger supplied him with a Bryco .380 -- with no questions asked. Smith then commenced his shooting spree. The Anderson suit seeks damages for the public nuisance caused by the defendants' irresponsible distribution practices.
In October 2001, the Cook County Circuit Court heard arguments in Anderson on the defendants' motion to dismiss. A decision has not yet been handed down.
This same appeals court will consider the lawsuit against the gun industry filed by the City of Chicago and Cook County. That suit, which also makes public nuisance claims, had been dismissed by a Circuit Court judge in September 2000, but is currently on appeal to the Illinois Appellate Court. Cook County and Chicago are among 32 cities and counties that have filed suit against the gun industry. The Legal Action Project represents 26 of these public entities.
I resent being told I'm a mysterious, unsolved scientific hypothisis pertaining to evolutionary theory!
Seriously, the last I checked the new company was making some unenthusiastic efforts to get out of some of the Fed sell-out overturned. Have they proclaimed the deal to be the POS it is or made any kind of all out effort?
If so point me to some docs on the subject, because I really like their revolvers (although their semi-autos really suck).
;-)
Sue the lawyers, judges, activists, everyone involved for conspiracy to deprive people of their civil rights.
Gee I guess S&W thought they had it made when they sold their souls to the Klinton admin. They better start realizing who their friends are.
My keyboard is responsible for all the spelling missteakss??
"There's no way to rule innocent men. The only power government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren't enough criminals, one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws." - Atlas Shrugged
The U.S. Code contains all federal statutes and consists of 56,117 single-spaced pages. Taking up nine feet of shelf space consisting of forty-seven volumes. A footnoted version has 230 volumes and 36 paperback supplements. The Code of Federal Regulations consists of more than 134,500 pages of regulatory law spanning twenty feet of shelf space. Judicial precedents for Federal law stretch across 490 feet of law-library shelving that consists of 2,756 volumes.
How many of of those laws have you broken?
I have read more than one lawyer's description of how small business owners struggle with the laws and regulations. Stating that virtually every small business breaks the law each day. Medium and Large businesses do too.
There are also a huge number of laws that affect the individual. Probably the only people not breaking the law are mostly young children. Give them a few more years and they'll be sucked into the "criminal" category too
Do you see what has happened? If it was possible to have enough cops to apprehend and process all law breakers and run them through the justice system society would run headlong into destruction. In a day society would come to a screeching halt.
Be thankful that all lawbreakers are not apprehended because we all might believe that we're just a bunch of criminals gone amuck and that our true nature as everyday heroes is just an illusion.
In essence, that's just what the politicians, bureaucrats, news reporters, journalists, academia professors and Enviro-cult activists have been implying if not telling us.
"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind.
They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority." -- Frederick Bastiat, The Law (1850)
"More Guns, Less Crime", by John Lott gives powerful statistical proof that law-abiding citizens that own guns is the best means of personal self-defense. Being used 2,000,000 times a year for self-defense while 98% of the time just brandishing a gun is enough to fend off the criminal. As Lott says, "an armed society is a polite society."
The National Crime Victimization Report, U.S. Department of Justice shows that women who respond passively are 2.5 times more likely to be seriously injured than women who use a gun to defend themselves. Lott shows powerful evidence that it is poor minorities who live in high crime areas who benefit the most from being able to defend themselves. But you'll never hear that from the news media.
Compare that to Michael Bellesiles' book, "Arming America: The Origins of a National Gun Culture", and the media that championed the book to beat the band. But the book turned out to be total fraud.
Continued below...
Number of accidental gun deaths per year (all age groups): 1,500
Number of 5 year-olds or younger who die from gun accidents in the home.: 30
Children 14 to 15 years of age are 14.5 times more likely to die from automobile injuries, 5 times more likely to die from drowning or fire and burns, and 3 times more likely to die from bicycle accidents than they are to die from gun accidents.
Make no mistake about it, without your life you have nothing. Your life is precious and everything to you.
The facts herein speak volumes about the twenty thousand unconstitutional gun laws written by the supposed compassionate politicians. Imagine that, 20,000 gun laws that infringes or violates every American's 2nd Amendment right to own and carry a gun -- hindering you and every other American from fully exercising his and her highest moral and individual right. It speaks volumes about other parasitical elites that are complicit in advocating and supporting the abuse of objective-law-abiding citizens.
Principle One: No person, group of persons, or government may initiate force, threat of force, or fraud against any individual.
Principle Two: Force may be morally and legally used only in self-defense against those who violate Principle One.
Principle Three: No exceptions shall be allowed for Principle One and Two.
Principle One is first a law. For every instance that a person has force initiated against them there is a loss to that person. Only the person/victim knows the true value of their loss. The law underlying Principle One is absolute. As absolute as gravity. As true as physics law.
Why objective law? Because there are so many laws -- political agenda laws -- fvirtual every person is a politically correct criminal. Or is that a politically incorrect criminal. Either way, you get The Point of objective law. The Point is...
Principle Two: Force may be morally and legally used only in self-defense against those who violate Principle One.
Principle Three: No exceptions shall be allowed for Principle One and Two.
Exactly right. The only time guns become a problem is when people use them to exercise their will, instead of using them to defend life and liberty.
Hitler, Pol Pot, bank robbers and SWAT teams (collecting contraband or settling custody disputes) all use or have used guns to exercise their will.
The moral use of firearms boils down to one very simple question: Is it being used to exercise somebody's will or to defend life and liberty?
It's certainly a stunning blow to capitalism, as every company is sued for every use of every product. It's a stunning blow against logic. It's a stunning blow against common sense.
But it's not a stunning blow to 'the gun industry'.
That's the one question all of the gun-controllers and especially the Brady Center avoid like the plague.
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