I seem to be using the Concord Monitor as a foil more and more as of late. Guesses are, they’re fairly easy to puncture, like yesterday. They ran a piece from Bloomberg that seemed to plead for the parent’s right to sue Remington. Remington is the parent company of Bushmaster Firearms which made the semi-automatic rifle that Adam Lanza used to kill school-children AFTER he murdered his mother to gain access to her guns. The parents sued Remington previously but PLCAA (Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act) denied their suit.
The parents’ money-grubbing ambulance-chasing lawyer, however, thinks he can spend their money to gain fame for himself with a “cutesie” line of attack. What caught my eye were these comments by the parents’ lawyer.
When Adam Lanza prepared for his massacre on the morning of Dec. 14, 2012, he put on tactical gear, taped 30-round magazines together and reached for a weapon that Remington should never had made available to him, plaintiffs attorney Josh Koskoff told the panel of judges Tuesday in Hartford…“The weapon he needed for his mission was never in doubt,” he said of the AR-15. “Remington may never have known, but they had been courting him for years. The courtship between Remington and Adam Lanza is at the heart of this case.”
Right – he makes it seem as if Remington was just PLEADING with this mentally deranged child to take the AR-15 Bushmaster out of their hands. Sorry, this is not how it works.
Anyways, commenter William Polit thinks this suit is a SPLENDID idea (emphasis mine)!
William Politt
That these families are still seeking justice – a true American tragedy!
And Trump friend Alex Jones continues to spread the lie that Sandy Hook was phony. It’s not only war where truth is the first casualty.
Like · Reply · Nov 15, 2017 9:48am
Justice? Really, justice? Justice can only be obtained from those that have done wrong, and I decided to test him:
Skip Murphy
So if someone steals my F-150 to commit a crime (“Allahu Akbar” optional) and runs someone down and kills them, Ford should be liable for that murder in court? That’s the kind of “justice” you wish to see?
Like · Reply · 1 · 23 hrs
None too happy with me, that one:
William Politt
Skip Murphy – reductio ad absurdum. You make a totally invalid analogy.
Like · Reply · 23 hrs
So I decide to further the object lesson:
Skip Murphy
William Politt Actually, no. The principle is that a manufacturer that creates and sells a legal product should not be held responsible for an illegal act using that product. That how PLCAA came about because civilian disarmement advocates were suing gun manufacturers all the time to the point of bankrupting them – the entire point of their legal exercises.
All I did was to take that example and extend it. There should be no difference between a gun and a car used for nefarious purposes as far as the manufacturer (or even a gun store) is concerned.
If a manufacturer makes a defective product, by all means sue them for redress and recovery; there are laws on the books for that. No one is claiming that in this case. The lawyer that claims that Remington “courted” Lanza is making an absurd argument and lying about what Remington did. For that he should be disbarred and made to make Remington whole from a financial standpoint as a result of this phony lawsuit that has already been tossed.
Again, it didn’t penetrate so off we went again:
William Politt
Skip Murphy – This statement: “They marketed the weapon for exactly what it was,” Koskoff said in court on Tuesday, adding that Remington even used product placement to get its product in first-person-shooter video games played by Lanza.” is in direct contradiction to your opinion. Why not let a jury of citizens hear the facts and arguments, be instructed in the law by a presiding judge, and come to a decision based on a preponderance of the evidence?
Your inclusion of a STOLEN vehicle invalidate your argument unless you can demonstrate that somewhere, sometime Ford promoted the F150 as a means to murder. Good luck with that. And your anti-Muslim little parenthetical is gratuitous and off-topic.
Like · Reply · 17 hrs
The answer I should have said was PLCAA has already disbarred the suit. I also should have made a comment that any company that is marketing a consumer good simply to murder people would be shut down in a heartbeat, but this went to the heart of Politt’s “marketing” claim:
Skip Murphy
William Politt Again, the lawyer’s own words: “a weapon that Remington should never had made available to him“. They didn’t do any such thing – what part of “Lanza murdered his mother in order to steal her arms” isn’t clear? And placement into a POV video game, like a ton of other manufacturers do for their products, is not making a product of theirs “available”.
But this, THIS, put a smile on my face, from Dan Williams (aka, Hunter Dan, MrWonderful, and a slew of other “handles” here at the ‘Grok) actually had to grudgingly agree with me:
Dan Williams
Well, there’s a first time or everything: I’m gonna have to agree with Skip Murphy over my friend Bill Politt. We can’t sue automobile manufacturers for accidents involving their vehicles. Why should it be ok to sue firearm manufacturers for crimes involving their products?
