Don's Guns Says It Can't Control What Happens After Sale

[struggle4progress]

Gun Shop Owner Deflects Dubious Ranking
POSTED: 6:27 pm EST December 13, 2010
UPDATED: 7:17 pm EST December 13, 2010

According to records obtained by The Washington Post, Don's Guns and Galleries ranked third in the nation for the number of firearms recovered by police ...

Don Davis, owner of Don's Guns, said the store sells around 300 guns daily, but all are approved by an FBI check before a gun is sold to customers. Davis said that what happens to the firearm after his sale is beyond his control.

"You can go to anybody else walking down the street and say, 'I want to buy that gun,'" Davis said. "They can sell you that gun. You could be a criminal, just got out of prison; it don't matter."

Davis attributed the high number of guns sold from his shop that wind up in criminal activity, more than 1,900 over the past four years according to the Post report, to a high volume of sales ...

http://www.theindychannel.com/news/26122472/detail.html

[pscot]

1. Niether can a bartender

but they can still be held liable.

[oneshooter]

2. For serving a "visibly impaired" customer.

By your reasoning auto makers and sellers should be liable for the misuse and illegal use of their products.
Is that true?

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[Straw Man]

8. Bad analogy.

The more apt comparison would be to a liquor store owner. If he sells someone a half-gallon of vodka, is he liable if the person drinks it all down at once, gets behind the wheel, and mows down a dozen pedestrians?

[oneshooter]

9. Then,according to that way of thought

you can sue the liquor store clerk, the auto maker AND the seller of the car! Just think of the money involved, of course most of it will go to lawyers.

Oneshooter
Armed and Livin in Texas

[slackmaster]

11. A person who is drunk is pretty easy to spot. What does a potential firearm abuser look like?

TIA for your honest reply.

[Euromutt]

16. Which, frankly, is also bullshit

The way I see it, the responsibility/culpability/liability for any damage caused by a drunk driver rests with the driver himself. Just like any harm caused by an individual using a firearm for unlawful purposes rests with that individual, not with the manufacturer, distributor and/or dealer of the firearm, provided the individual in question passed a NICS check.

Call me old-fashioned, conservative, what have you, but I developed my notions of culpability working on the Srebrenica mass murders while at the UN ICTY, and I learned that ultimately, the people responsible, culpable and liable are the ones who pulled the triggers, and the ones who told them to pull the triggers, not the ones who supposedly didn't do enough to stop the ones who pulled the triggers from pulling the triggers. Let's not kid ourselves; the notion that bartenders and bar owners should be civilly liable for damages caused by people they'd served drinks to is the result of injury lawyers lobbying legislators when it turned out that drunk drivers generally don't have a whole lot of money to seize.

[SteveM]

18. Dram shop laws cover package sales. Still want liability? nt

[Travis_0004]

3. Somebody has to be number 1. . .

They are a large shop, and they sell a lot of guns, and some may get used by criminals.

If there is no foul play, then there is nothing else to do.

[SteveM]

19. If police/LEOs think this is such a problem, then hang out at Don's...

like they do at some gun shows where they can spot straw buyers and/or dissuade attempts at straw purchases.

[ZombieHorde]

4. How could they control what happens after a sale?

If I intentionally give my children an overdose of an over the counter drug, who is responsible? I think I would be the sole person responsible.

[provis99]

5. If people can't buy guns, only criminals can buy guns!

or something like that...

[lawodevolution]

6. If i were this gun dealer I'd tell them "no comment"

and that's it.

[Euromutt]

7. Can pharmacies control what happens after they sell a prescription medication?

If some guy comes in with a valid prescription for painkillers, what is the pharmacy supposed to do other than sell them to him? It's hardly the pharmacy's fault if the customer, instead of taking the meds, flogs them to his local dealer instead.

Yes, prescribing physicians have been prosecuted for issuing prescriptions to patients who subsequently resold their medications (William Hurwitz being one notable example, despite the Virginia Board of Medicine ruling that he'd written the prescriptions in good faith), but no pharmacist gets prosecuted or stripped of his license for filling valid prescriptions.

The gun stores, in this regard, are in an analogous situation to the pharmacies: both are required to obtain authorization from another entity (NICS or a prescribing physician, resp.) telling them that, yes, you can legally sell this item to this individual. Nobody can read minds, so what other measures can you reasonably expect the sellers to take to ensure that the product they sell will not be misused?

[cleanhippie]

10. Are you saying that you should be responsible for what happens after you post nonsense like this?

I think you are.

[struggle4progress]

12. Don's business cleverly self-advertises: about once a day, there's a crime story from his sales

and those stories drive sales! It's a clever niche!

[X_Digger]

13. Does he etch his logo into each gun?

No? Then your post really doesn't make a lick of sense, now does it?

[cleanhippie]

14. Thats an interesting hypothesis.

About as valid as your incessant posting of gun stories that have no point, since you neglect to opine on the reason for posting them in the first place.

[SteveM]

20. What problems do you see, here? Are you serious about this?

[Tejas]

15. news flash: GM can't control drunk drivers either

BAN CARS!

:rofl:

[Katya Mullethov]

17. As long as you keep track someone will always be number 1,2,3,4,5

Is there another article in that paper entitled

"Women Involved in 97% of all Violent Rapes" or "Blacks and Hispanics Cause Crime"

Isn't it fun to mis-use statistics to malign an entire group of law-abiding people? Whether that group be minorities, women, or gunstore owners.

Clearly, the top 10 gun stores on this list are operating within the law, selling firearms to people that pass a NICS check, and keeping clear and accurate documentation, because if they were not, the ATF would have shut them down the day before last week .