Suing gun makers

[X_Digger]

http://www.scotusblog.com/wp/tracking-new-cases-suing-gun-makers/

Seeking to revive a lawsuit against a gun manufacturer over a teenager’s accidental but fatal shooting of a friend, lawyers for the Illinois parents of the dead boy have asked the Supreme Court to strike down a four-year-old federal law that shields the industry from many — but not all — lawsuits.

<snip>

The tragedy that led to the Adames lawsuit in Illinois occurred eight years ago, when 13-year-old Billy Swan aimed and fired a Beretta pistol at a friend who had come over to play, Joshua Adames, who also was 13. The gun belonged to Billy’s dad, a Cook County sheriff’s deputy. Billy had taken out the gun’s clip before aiming it, believing that would make it harmless. A bullet that had remained in the gun’s chamber killed Joshua.

<snip>

While a lower state court allowed that claim to proceed, the Illinois Supreme Court blocked the lawsuit altogether. It ruled that, because Billy had intentionally aimed the gun and pulled the trigger, the incident did not come within the exception Congress had made to the lawsuit ban. But it also went further, and found that the law did not run afoul of the Constitution’s Tenth Amendment, and its protection of state laws, because it did not “commandeer” state officials or processes to carry out some federal order or duty.

A parent (a sheriff's deputy no less!) didn't teach their kid gun safety, and they blame the gun manufacturer.

[Fire_Medic_Dave]

1. Deputy Swan needs to sue himself.

[sam sarrha]

7. he was criminally negligent leaving the gun unsecured, he needs to go to jail. the lawsuit is a

cover for personal negligence

[krispos42]

23. How dare the gun work as advertised!

I mean, he pointed the gun at his friend and pulled the trigger with a round in the chamber! How DARE the gun go off under those circumstances!

:sarcasm:

[Euromutt]

25. How about Cook County Sheriff's Office?

I mean, they evidently didn't adequately train Deputy Swan in firearm before entrusting him with a firearm and unleashing him on an unsuspecting public. He could also sue the state government for letting him buy the handgun. There's a metric assload of people and institutions the Swans could sue before they get to Beretta.

Or maybe Deputy Swan could just man up and admit that the mistake was his for failing to both child-proof his gun and gun-proof his child.

[ZombieHorde]

2. I understand suing the gun maker if the gun blows up or does something weird,

but I don't understand suing them for ones own stupidity, maybe sue your parents, but not the gun maker.

[baldguy]

5. The CPSC has no regulatory authority over firearms.

[Statistical]

6. The BATFE does. Your point?

The CPSC also has no oversight of carseats and 2 dozen other industries.

http://www.cpsc.gov/BUSINFO/notcpsc.html

Guess every carseat is a deathtrap and nobody can sue them because they are protected by the Obama Death Panels.

[madeline_con]

3. Yes, this is a bad parenting issue. n/t

[Statistical]

4. Gun manufacturers now make magazine disconectors for this exact reason.

When magazine is removed a lever drops which engages the internal safety. I don't think they serve a legitimate purpose but it does help to shield them from lawsuits (like writing warning HOT on a cup of HOT coffee).

I bought an M&P before I realized it has a magazine disconnector. I manually disabled it, pretty easy to do. I don't mind it being an option but I wasn't aware they exist and it wasn't clearly marked. Given the choice I would chose a weapon without any useless junk like magazine disconnector or internal locks.

Two reaons:
One when I pull the trigger I want the gun to fire, my safety is between my ears.
Two I figure it is just one more thing that can break at the worst possible time.

Can you imagine using a gun in self defense and it goes <click> because somehow the magazine disconector has jammed and the weapon "thinks" there is no magazine. Or you and perp wrestle for the gun and someone hits magazine release, you get control of the weapon and <click> <click> it just because a useless club until you find and re-insert the magazine.

[Euromutt]

20. Opinions on magazine disconnectors and internal locks vary

Personally, I like them. For every hypothetical scenario in which a magazine disconnector causes an undesirable result, you can cook up one in which the mag disconnector provides an advantage (e.g. the perp manages to wrest the gun away and turns it on you, but it refuses to fire the chambered round because--aha!--you managed to drop the mag). At the end of the day, it comes down to personal choice. I don't think either should be mandatory, but I get more than a little annoyed by people who hector me over how I'm an idiot because I prefer 'em (not you, Statistical, but I've encountered it on other forums).

[Statistical]

21. I agree on the personal choice.

As long as the govt doesn't mandate them and they are clearly marked I have no problem with them.

[pipoman]

27. Still important to note that

not all guns have this feature. Glock and (unless they have changed) the S&W Sigma come to mind. I believe that the one undesirable feature of the glock is the requirement to dry fire the gun prior to disassembling it. I suspect that the vast majority of unintentional discharges with Glocks are a result of this feature.

[Pavulon]

29. I have had one for 15 years tens of thousands of rounds

and can see how that step could cause problems for those who do not follow safety rules.

[sharesunited]

8. Nothing to threaten gun manufacturers' profits or wealth pleez! They make our sacred guns.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[sharesunited]

10. Taking away the pain of civil judgments just encourages more to be made.

Inherently dangerous products ought to pose the greatest risk to those who make them.

[no bad days]

11. Sure....

Like cars,swimming pools and hundreds of other things that take more lives each year than guns. D@mn you swimming pool manufacturer's for making my kid drown!(that will be a cool million please) Or maybe we could sue God for creating rivers, as many people in my area drown in those every year.

[sharesunited]

13. Accidental deaths and homicides have no equivalency. Did you join DU to proclaim your gun love?

[Euromutt]

24. I just love how you hinge your arguments on unsupported assertions

"Accidental deaths and homicides have no equivalency." Bullshit. While accidents are, by definition, unintentional, there is more often than not negligence on somebody's part involved. In other words, just because it wasn't meant to happen doesn't mean it's nobody's fault.

If my wife and kid were killed in an MV collision by some idiot who was too busy yakking on a cell phone (or trying to eat a chili dog, or fixing her make-up) to pay attention to the road, while the law might class it involuntary vehicular manslaughter, it wouldn't make a whole lot of difference to me if the mother-lover had put a gun to their heads and pulled the trigger. They would be just as dead, I would be just as grief-stricken and angry.

[Katya Mullethov]

33. And then comes the real test

After having lost your entire family to phonecrime , would you feel compelled to spend the rest of your life lobbying local ,state ,and federal government to pass yet more laws ?

[AtheistCrusader]

39. You could sue the phone manufacturer for making a phone that functions at speeds greater than

a human can run.

I mean, since we're just making up wild 'product defects' to sue about.

[no bad days]

34. Gun love

sounds kinky.....I may just may be into that pm me;). So accidents do not count huh? I guess we can wipe the majority of gun deaths off the books then.

[AtheistCrusader]

40. Actually, accidents are a still-declining tiny percentage of gun related injuries and deaths.

Far smaller than violent crime and suicide related uses of firearms. And it's getting smaller every year.

[no bad days]

41. True

If you buy into the way the numbers are calculated ....then I overstated. However the number of "homicides" is also highly overstated. They include all incidences of justified homicides as well as police shootings in those numbers. Some statistics actually count military related injuries/deaths (I wish I was kidding on that one).

[AtheistCrusader]

42. True

Many reported 'accidental deaths' are actually suicides, but protecting either the privacy of the family, or insurance payouts.

[JonQ]

37. I thought the equivalency would be that

they were both dead.

I guess homicide fatalities are more dead than accident fatalities. And even more so if a gun was used.

[AtheistCrusader]

38. That wasn't an accidental death. It was negligent homicide.

You point a gun at someone, with the safety off and pull the trigger and it goes *BANG*

CALL THE FUCKING LAWYERS THIS GUN IS DEFECTIVE

[imdjh]

12. You like being whiny and annoying, don't you?

[Israfel4]

14. Have you ever seen/heard of a firearm discharging on its own??? n/t

[spin]

15. Modern firearms are rarely inherently dangerous...

but some people are.

[sharesunited]

16. The product and access to the product are two sides of the same problem.

[TheWraith]

17. Your brain is a dangerous place, you know that?

By what passes for logic out of you, I shouldn't be allowed to have a steak because somewhere, somebody might have choked on one. This is the sort of completely logic-free, nanny state bullshit that we beat the living crap out of the Republicans for when they're trying to push their own views on other people about sex or abortion, but some people see nothing wrong with total massive hypocrisy when THEY are the ones doing the pretentious moralizing.

[Euromutt]

26. You did notice the plaintiff is a sheriff's deputy, right?

Even if we could completely eliminate firearms in private hands, this moron would still have access to an agency-issued handgun which he could leave lying around the house with a round chambered. I bet that would the manufacturer's fault too, huh?

[SteveM]

46. Oh! I just LOVE it when you talk about pain. (nt)

[krispos42]

22. What did they do wrong here?

I'm curious.

[Euromutt]

30. Gun manufacturers' wealth?

The profit margins in gun manufacturing aren't so high that anyone's making money hand-over-fist. When Remington was bought by Cerberus Capital Management two years ago, the company had debts of $252 million. U.S. Repeating Arms (which made guns under the Winchester trademark) closed it doors for good in 2006. The Ithaca Gun Company went out of business in 2005 (though the assets were bought and the company re-established since).

Sure, many firms have been doing good business since last November, but that's hardly typical.

[JonQ]

36. They produced a legal item that functioned as it was supposed to

and they are to blame?

If guns are illegal then yes, you could sue them for illegally selling a prohibited item (or course this was to a cop and usually gun grabbers are in favor of arming the state). But as is no, you may not sue them. Their product performed as expected.

I don't suppose you'd favor suing GM if one of your family members were killed by one of their products in the hand of someone misusing it?

[aikoaiko]

18. Left the gun lying around.

That was the problem -- the gun owner.

[proteus_lives]

19. Groundless.

Blaming others for his mistakes. It's absurd, you fucked up deputy. Live with it.

[pipoman]

28. I don't believe that this suit was brought by the deputy

but the parents of the deputy's sons friend who was shot. They should have gotten relief from the deputy and the department/county...the gun operated as designed and was designed in accordance with all applicable laws.

[Euromutt]

31. Hm, you may be right, but if so, there's an error in the article

The tragedy that led to the Adames lawsuit in Illinois occurred eight years ago, when 13-year-old Billy Swan aimed and fired a Beretta pistol at a friend who had come over to play, Joshua Adames, who also was 13. The gun belonged to Billy’s dad, a Cook County sheriff’s deputy. Billy had taken out the gun’s clip before aiming it, believing that would make it harmless. A bullet that had remained in the gun’s chamber killed Joshua.

Billy’s parents sued Beretta, among others, contending that the gun manufacturer failed to warn users of this kind of pistol that removal of the magazine did not make it safe.

Emphasis mine. Should perhaps have read "Joshua's parents."

[slackmaster]

32. Bottom-feeding lawyers in action, taking advantage of bereaved parents

Nothing to see here.

[JonQ]

35. This is why private citizens shouldn't be allowed to own guns

only trained professionals; like the military, SWAT, professional body guards, and polic . . . oh . . .

[Tim01]

43. Sue alchohol makers. Sue car makers. Sue computer makers. nt

[SteveM]

47. ...Peggy Sue, Boy named Sue, the whole Sioux nation... nt

[OttavaKarhu]

Dad left the gun WHERE?

And didn't teach his kid how it worked, or take him to the range to teach safety skills?

And lawyers are advocating for more lawsuits? What a surprise.

[OttavaKarhu]

44. Dad left the gun WHERE?

And didn't teach his kid how it worked, or take him to the range to teach safety skills?

And lawyers are advocating for more lawsuits? What a surprise.

[scrinmaster]

45. Just going after the ones with the deepest pockets.