Posted on 01/01/2002 4:02:19 AM PST by tom paine 2
Edited on 09/03/2002 4:49:49 AM PDT by Jim Robinson. [history]
In a significant victory for gun-control advocates, the Illinois Appellate Court ruled Monday that gunmakers and distributors can be sued on the grounds that their products create a public nuisance.
Marking the first time an Illinois appeals court has considered the novel legal strategy, the decision allows the family of slain Chicago Police Officer Michael Ceriale and relatives of two others killed in gun violence to press their claim in Cook County Circuit Court that firearms manufacturers and distributors have "nurtured a climate of violence" by flooding Chicago and its suburbs with guns.
A startling use of imprecise terminology here.
"Power to control."
"Purposeful creation."
"Oversupplying the areas."
This one is destined for the USSC, where it will be overturned on the basis of sloppy language and sloppy reasoning.
Obviously false on its face. Like any other legal, legitimate business entity, the gun manufacturers are in business to make money for themselves and for their stockholders. This suit and this court seems to think that the guns are routinely given away on street corners (can you imagine the sign? "Free Guns! Thugs Only!").
This court made a local, emotional decision (that's what liberals and activists do) to a legal problem that their government won't solve (another liberal hallmark). I would hope that SCOUTUS doesn't even have to see this -- that the appellate level will give it the shredding that it deserves.
Correct. It is their job to sell as many guns as they can, as long as they comply with the law. The judge is saying, in an exact analogy, of automobile manufacturers, for example: "defendants have the power to control the purposeful creation and maintenance of an illegal secondary market by oversupplying the areas around Chicago with automobiles." This decision is insane. The only way anyone could even imagine that this decision serves any proper purpose is if they were to assume the obviously false proposition that handguns have no useful purpose.
By the way, where is all this gun advertising going on? Aside from the various outdoor magazines and the NRA publications, I can't EVER remember seeing an advertisement for Smith and Wesson, Browning, Ruger, Glock, etc, etc.
So then if someone steals a Ford Expedition and uses it in a high speed chase that kills people, couldn't one assume that since Ford knew that it could go 120 and can runover smaller cars, that Ford also knows they too are selling a deadly product that will only be used for misuse?
And the IRS is not a public nuisance?
You got it...don't you just love these words from the first sentence "can be sued on the grounds that their products create a public nuisance"?
I agree though...this will be overturned by a higher court.
As a formeer resident of Missouri, I often heard it suggested that the way to solve the crime problem in East St. Louis, Illinois would be to drive a delivery truck around downton ESL on a Friday night handing out free guns and whiskey.
I think it would work!
Yah, it would work until the lawyers got there and started suits against the manufacturers of the guns and the whiskey. And the maker of the truck, too.
Yeah, right...they forcibly caused all those people to go to their nearest gun shop (or illegal street source) and buy a firearm, or two or three...
I debated this very issue with a guncontroll nazi on compuserve years ago. It was his contention that if your gun was stolen and used in a crime, then you should be liable for both civil damages and criminal penalties. If, for example, your gun was used to rob a bank, and in the course of that crime, several people were killed, you could be charged as a co-conspirator in murder and armed robbery as well as being liable for the damages suffered by the bank. I posed the hypothetical that the robbers stole your gun and your neighbors car and used both in the crime, would your neighbor also be liable and a co-conspirator. Of course, his answer was no since your neighbor needed a car but you had no need for a gun.
This gun nazi's intent was quite clear. If these penalties were available, then no one could afford to own a gun. This is the same logic behind these gun suits, to make gun making unaffordable.
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