The parents and survivors of the Sandy Hook massacre have been looking for legal redress ever since Adam Lanza destroyed so many lives on that tragic 2012 day. In many ways, their search for closure is an understandable one, even as they themselves know that no changed law and no civil judgement will ever bring their loved ones back. You can’t apply logic to grief, and you can’t exactly blame a parent who lost a child to a murderous psychopath for going on a quest for change.
You can, however, blame the judges who are apparently just as irrational.
Last week, the Connecticut Supreme Court issued one of the worst legal rulings in quite some time, determining that the families of Sandy Hook victims can move forward with a lawsuit against Remington, the manufacturer of the Bushmaster rifle Lanza used in the shooting. The decision is not only a slap in the face of the Second Amendment, it defies Congress’s Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which expressly protects firearms manufacturers from this kind of liability.
“The court ruled that the Sandy Hook families should have the opportunity to prove that Remington violated the Connecticut Unfair Trade Practices Act (CUTPA) by marketing what it knew was a weapon designed for military use to civilians such as Nancy and Adam Lanza,” reported the Hartford Courant.
But as John Hinderaker points out over at Powerline, there is no Second Amendment exception to guns manufactured for military use. In point of fact, he notes, “the 1911, designed by John Browning, was the standard U.S. military pistol for many years and remains one of the most popular pistol designs today.” The left likes to use this “weapons of war” argument in their political rhetoric, and that’s all well and good. It certainly plays well with the base. But it is not a legal argument and it holds exactly ZERO weight in terms of what the Second Amendment does and does not cover.
The other argument Democrats like to use is that by passing the PLCAA, Republicans in Congress somehow favored the gun industry with liability protections that no other industry has. This is plainly false. What the PLCAA did was give gun manufacturers the SAME, commonsense protections that EVERY other industry has. Unless you think Bowie should be sued every time someone stabs a fellow human with one of their knives. Unless you think Ford should be sued every time some lunatic plows into a crowd.
It is absurd that such a standard should exist, and federal law mandates that this ruling be struck down by the Supreme Court.
