Consequences of Anti-Gun Case Law

The November/December issue of Women & Guns has an interesting editorial on the goals of the Brady Bunch, and the consequences to everyone if they are successful. The fact that Sarah Brady and her group want to disarm all American civilians is well documented, and is nothing new to those who would read this blog. The means in which the various anti gun movements are attempting to reach that end can have very serious consequences to all Americans, even those who do not own a firearm.

Take for example the attempt to make firearms manufacturers liable for the criminal use of guns:

Some years ago the anti-gun movement shifted its focus from the legislative process to the courts. They recruited big city mayors to finance kamikaze legal attacks on gun manufacturers. Their goal was gun control by destroying the ability of citizens to buy guns. The fact that putting the manufacturers out of business would also hurt the ability of cities to arm their police departments was ignored.

One theme of the suits was that manufacturers should be held liable for the actions of third parties over whom they had no control (intervening cause). The manufacturers argued on the basis of the common law that there was no proximate cause between their conducting a lawful business and the injury. Further, they did not fail to perform any duty required of them by law in the manufacturing and sale of their product.

The anti-gun groups wanted to change the standards of negligence to financially destroy the firearms industry. If they change the standard, however, the new standard of saying industry is responsible for the misuse of its products, would be disastrous. Such a standard would make some lawyers wealthy but would destroy much of our remaining industry and put thousands of common people out of work. This possibility did not deter the anti-gun movement but it did inspire Congress to pass legislation to protect industry. As of this writing, most, but not all, of the suits against manufacturers have been dismissed.

In their misguided zeal to put American firearm manufacturers out of business, the anti-gunners attempted to generate case law that would have been disastrous for all American manufacturing. It is a very good thing that they were defeated. American manufacturing is already being litigated and legislated out of business, and case law holding a manufacturer of a product liable for it's illegal end use would have made it even harder to do business in the United States.

Now that they have failed in that attempt, the anti gunners break the law to try and break small firearm dealers:

That has not deterred the anti-gun movement. They devised sting operations to entice dealers into sales that they then argued are illegal "straw man" sales. The fact these "sting" operations may compromise legitimate law enforcement investigations is lost on the anti-gun movement. Based on their own vigilante actions, they then file civil actions against the dealer. Most dealers are small businesses. Defending against a civil suit is very expensive and destructive of the business.

Dealers have settled suits they thought were groundless because the expense of defending themselves was prohibitive. That is, the anti-gun movement has taken to violating the law, entrapping (or sometimes lying to) dealers, to use the legal system to extort something of value from the dealers. There is a name for that in the law. It is called racketeering. Their actions are not directed at criminals, but they want to shift the responsibility for crime onto the average citizens trying to comply with the law.

Here is proof that the anti-gunners are not concerned with ending violent crime at all. They want to disarm America. You never see the anti's promoting stiffer penalties for violent criminals. They do not provide any for self and home defence for low income families, other than call 911 and pray.

The thrust of the Brady Legal Program is to focus responsibility away from the criminal or person directly responsible for an injury. It goes after private individuals whose only "crime" is that they own guns. In many cases, the gun owners are the same people who are the victims of the very perpetrators the Brady Legal Program chooses to release from responsibility. The fact that a city might not adequately man, train or fund its police department is of no interest to the Brady Center. Nor is it concerned with the types of heavy handed civil rights violations that drive a wedge between the community and law enforcement.

They are trying to develop a line of cases that will alter the common law to establish liability against persons other than the individual who directly causes a harm. They want some court to rule that an owner of a gun, or other people that might have some relationship to the owner of a gun, are liable for injuries caused by those who might misuse the gun.

The article goes on to discuss private property rights and the rights of landlords. Yes, the anti's are fighting against those also. You can read the rest of it here.