There was a remarkable decision by a Texas federal judge this week when U.S. District Judge Xavier Rodriguez for the Western District of Texas ruled that the Air Force was legally at fault for the 2017 mass shooting in Sutherland Springs, Texas by Devin Patrick Kelley. The Air Force failed to enter a prior offense into the federal background check database to bar him from purchasing a firearm. The liability alone is notable but Rodriguez found the Air Force more at fault that Kelley for the killing of 26 people and wounding of 22 others in the massacre at the First Baptist Church.
Judge Rodriguez found that Kelley was 40 percent responsible for the shooting while the U.S. government was 60 percent responsible.
The failure to enter the data allowed Kelley to make four separate firearm purchases in preparation for his attack. The National Instant Criminal Background Check System (NICS) showed Kelley as eligible to buy such firearms despite his 2012 conviction by a general court martial of domestic assault on his wife and child. That should have made him ineligible.
The ruling of liability is a major victory for those who want tougher gun enforcement. Such a judgment against a federal agency is exceptionally rare.
The division of responsibility however seems inversive to logic. To say that the Air Force is more responsible than a mass murderer is bizarre. It reminds me of the case of Alisa Prueitt, 43, who killed another driver in 2013 in a drunk-driving case. Prueitt had been sent home by her employer, Southlake-based Senior Living Properties, for showing up intoxicated. The family sued both Prueitt and the company. A jury then awarded $16.7 million to the family of Sam Graham, including $5 million in punitive damages, in a wrongful-death lawsuit. However, it found Pruiett only 35 percent responsible while finding Southlake-based Senior Living Properties 65 percent responsible.
This was likely a clerical error with tragic results. It is not clear that Kelley would not have succeeded in acquiring weapons regardless of the error. However, there is clearly fault and a nexus present in this case to the fatalities. The failures of the Air Force were documented in an Inspector General report. Yet, it is otherworldly to suggest that the Air Force is more responsible for these deaths than the murderer himself. The ruling makes Kelley look more like a mere accomplice to an Air Force murder spree.
The judge got it right. This is not a criminal trial, it’s a civil one, where the aim is to penalize thru (usually) a monetary assessment. Sure, the shooter is ultimately responsible, but the government (in this case, the US Air Force) “assisted” him by keeping his disqualifying crime from being used to deny him a firearm.
This isn’t a moral judgement, it’s a practical one – someone’s gotta pay, and in this case, 60% of that is the government. I hope this is the start of a trend where those whose bureaucratic screwups cost lives are no longer allowed to hide behind a curtain of undeserved immunity.
“The trial conclusively established that no other individual . . . knew as much as the United States about the violence . . .”
So can we hold democrat mayors and governors 60% responsible for the Antifa/BLM riots?
There are records of emails and calls between certain mayors/staffers and the BLM planners that firmly establish the fact that police were going to be ordered to stand down while the cities were trashed.
Tbhis is another reason for doing one thing that police protestors actually want – ending Qualified immunity.
QI is not just for the police – it covers ALL in government who violate your rights – mayors, judges, …
The police were ordered to stand down at charlottesville in 2017. The police have been ordered to stand down in many of the riots that occured in the US.
Those who ordered the police not to do their duty arguably violated the law, and inarguably violated the rights of anyone who was harmed.
People who were assaulted injured or killed, businesses that were damaged should be able to sue governments AND the mayors or others who made decisions that resulted in foreseable harms. But they can not QI thwarts that.
QI is also an example of precisely the judge made law that conservatives are supposed to oppose.
There is no constitutional provision or statute that created QI – the courts manufactured it on their own.
Agreed on this point, Turley. Probably best to scale back responsibility in the Kelley case from 60/40 to 50/50. Clearly the Air Force was negligent in patterns and practices. Clearly Kelley became a mass shooter.
I’d add this to the mix as well…, the gun manufacturer. I think they should be eligible to be included in judgements around mass killings where their products were used and not be able to skate with the ‘guns don’t kill people, people kill people’ red herring. I’ve yet to hear of a person that could shoot multiple people with their minds alone, nor hear of a gun that could shoot an equal number without someone to pull the trigger. So the accurate statement would be: People, with guns, kill people.
If the gun manufacturer could be swung into the mix the ratio of responsibility could be adjusted to an equal 33% responsibility between, Kelley, the Air Force, and the manufacturer of the weapon used in the crime.
Everything considered, the trend toward including enabling factors to be included in judgements is a positive one, especially industries that have previously been able to skate on clean up costs of their products. Let the market play it’s part in cleaning up the messes they’ve caused. Oil and gas companies. Gun manufacturers, etc. They have to feel the friction in order to properly regulate themselves.
eb
Liable for making a legal product? Wow. Was the product defective? Do we sue auto makers for driver errors or DUI fatalities? Likewise, do we sue spirit makers for those offenses? Let’s take the individual out of it completely. It’s always a company’s fault (or Republicans) in fantasy land
“Liable for making a legal product? Wow. Was the product defective? ”
Yes. Legal or not, some firearm products are defective.
eb
When any product – firearm or otherwise is defective – i.e. unsuitable for the purpose it was produced for, then the manufacturer is liable.
If a handgun fails to fire as a result of a manufacturing defect when used to protect a person from a burglary or rape – then the gun maker is liable.
When the product does exactly what it was designed and manufactured to do – the manufacturer is not liable.
The fact that a product is intended to do something that you do not like – is NOT a defect.
Who says I don’t like it? I mean, I’ve seen you in my time here make a practice of arguing points with someone they never made because defocusing is your game. But whether I like something of not has no bearing on whether I think it’s appropriate for mass public consumption.
I’d love to see you argue a single point sometime. I think you’re incapable of it. Prove me wrong.
eb
lets see your argument is that I sometimes make an error that is quite literally what YOU are doing in your post ?
If I have represented your position in a way that is not logically consistent with your own remarks – please provide an example and I will correct myself.
My “game” as you call it or atleast one is called reductio ad absurdem – it is to take YOUR arguments to and apply them beyond the bounds you considered and see if the still work.
When they do not the burden is on YOU to define a meaningful limiting principle.
This is a perfectly standard and valid argument.
Yeah, sure it is, John. Except my “argument” was in direct response to a point you brought up. Recall that you said that the economic recovery from the 2008 recession/depression was the slowest since the great depression and is nothing to boast about. I asked you why a recovery from the next greatest recession/depression wouldn’t be something to boast about…
You veered immediately to trying to discount commonly accepted economic history with what Ronald Reagan would’ve labeled “fuzzy math”. No economic data points. No acknowledgement of Republican resistance to ‘granting’ the dems the most efficient means to spur an economic recovery. Just a denial of history on your part because, like, you said so. Lol. And then the requisite detour into libertarian talking points.
So I see you’re no better at staying on point than you ever were. Have fun with that.
eb
“Except my “argument” was in direct response to a point you brought up.”
No, your argument is the argument you made. I did not make it for you. You made it yourself.
Its flaws are yours.
You say your argument was in direct response – but it wasn’t. You made a different claim about 2008 – one that was false.
And then you provided a “source” that not only contradicted your claims but was not a real source and whose analysis was OBVIOUSLY logically inconsistent and unsound.
I did not chose your argument.
I did not choose your source.
Your mistakes are your own.
“Recall that you said that the economic recovery from the 2008 recession/depression was the slowest since the great depression and is nothing to boast about.”
Correct.
“I asked you why a recovery from the next greatest recession/depression wouldn’t be something to boast about…”
Or you could go back and read what you actually said, what you argued, defended and then cited a crappy “source” that did not even defend your argument.
“You veered immediately to trying to discount commonly accepted economic history”
I am not interested in what YOU claim to be “common economic history” – why would I trust YOUR claims about what is accepted – when the facts are readily available.
You are offering more leftist BS argument – what does “commonly accepted” mean ?
Does it mean you can find a couple of people who say that ? There are people who say the earth is flat.
Is it what ordinary people beleive ? ordinary people beleive lots of things that are right and lots of things that are wrong.
Is it what some select group of “experts” claim ? – Would these be lie the experts who told us that a vaccine could not be done in 9 months or that C19 came from bats in Wuhan wet markets ? Or that assorted policies like social distancing, lockdowns, masks would work ?
Why should anyone trust the people YOU think are experts ?
Regardless whatever you think is “commonly accepted” – we actually have the FACTS.
There are TWO metrics by which the 20089 recession was worse than the 1980 one – or generally particularly bad.
The first is that it is just barely more severe at its worst quarter, and the other – which is the consequence of bad policy choices by Obama is that the RECOVERY was weak and protracted.
There were far more negative quarters in 1980, inflation was high at the start, interest rates were high at the start, unemployment was high BEFORE the recession. Put simply the economy was incredibly weak in 1980 BEFORE the recession.
While in 2008 the economy was fundimentally sound both before and after.
There was a real problem in 2008 – the consequence of an asset bubble bursting – not other underlying economic problems.
Worse still the asset was homes – a durable asset – the Tech bubble was as large a bubble but it was in a less dangerous part of the economy.
Government should never cause economic bubbles., But it should especially avoid them in durable assets.
All that said there is no fundimental reason that the economy should not have recovered quickly.
We had far more economic damage in 2020 – we are STILL seeing the repercussions of some of that.
Aparently 30% of all small businesses have been wiped out.
That is a far bigger deal than the housing bubble.
“with what Ronald Reagan would’ve labeled “fuzzy math”. ”
Again you seem to think that saying something males it true.
My argument is that you were wrong about the 2008 recession and recovery.
Your own sources demonstrate that.
“No economic data points.”
False – Though your source botched it – NBER, BEA, and myriads of other sources provide all the data needed.
I cited you the misery index in 1980 – are you actually arguing that we did NOT have double digit interest, inflation and unemployment ?
And near double digit collapse in growth ?
Why is it you constantly demand proof of things that you can find easily ?
“No acknowledgement of Republican resistance to ‘granting’ the dems the most efficient means to spur an economic recovery.”
Of course not – because Republicans were right and you, democrats and Obama were wrong.
Even Keynes eventually accepted that government stimulus does not work.
Regardless, I cited the 1920 depression – which was sharp much deeper than 2008 and had a recovery that was only exceeded by the recent pandemic recovery – until Biden got his hands on it.
There was no stimulus in 1920. There was none in 1980. there was almost 1/2 T in 2008 – and a tepid recovery.
So you are clear – there was no stimulus needed in 2020 or 2021. All that was needed an end to the government policy idiocy.
We are paying for the “stimulus” regarding Covid – much quicker than expected.
If you wish to blame Trump for part of that – I will not argue – But Biden has doubled down on that mistake of Trump’s
And we are all paying.
Republicans did the right thing in response to 2008. Everybody did the wrong thing in 2020.
“Just a denial of history on your part”
Odd claim.
Do we disagree on the facts ? Sort of, you keep getting facts wrong.
You exagerate the scale of 2008, you pretend that 1980 was inconsequential, you pretend there was no stimulus in 2009 or that it was small, or that republicans impeded it.
Each of these errors of yours is trivially verifiable. If you can not get the basic facts correct – why should your analysis be trusted ?
Absolutely Republicans obstructed much of Obama’s agenda – an agenda that had nothing to do with economic recovery.
Further you are oblivious to the key point I made.
The worst recoveries in US history were by activist progressive democrat presidents.
You say republicans obstructed Obama – yet they did not.
Regardless, they did not have the power to obstruct FDR – and yet FDR;s recovery was disasterous.
My observation is correlation – causastion is more difficult to prove. But the correlation is a pretty good place to state.
Further correlations wreak havoc on alternative thesis. No matter what Neither FDR nor Obama were able to bring about strong recovery – While Reagan brought a very strong recovery.
No sane person should be exploring the wonderful job Obama or FDR did – because they clearly did not.
If Obama did not cause a protracted recovery – he still presided over one. He did NOT cause a strong recovery.
You do not seem to get that. Whether I can prove Obama created a weak recovery – I can absolutely prove he did NOT create a strong one. The same with FDR.
“because, like, you said so. Lol.”
Very strange argument – you demand proof from me of something that you can easily find from sources like TE, NBER, BEA, the FED.
Google is your friend – and the sun rose today – I do not need to prove it – it is both true and not controversial.
It is actually what you call “commonly accepted” – because it is fact.
“And then the requisite detour into libertarian talking points.”
It is called economics.
“So I see you’re no better at staying on point than you ever were.”
Both false and irrelevant.
A problem you constantly have.
I am not obligated to confine the scope of my arguments to the domain of your choosing.
You do not get to demand that we use a single metric of your choosing to measure a recession (or anything) – one in which your own sources contradict you.
When you make a false claim – any valid argument that refutes it is on point.
Very aptly stated.
Should be reguired reading for all libs.
They are not Libs anymore, they are full blown Communists/Marxist and they were labeled by their own Marxist GOD as “useful idiots” for a reason. They are not intelligent enough to understand common sense.
“I’d love to see you argue a single point sometime. I think you’re incapable of it. Prove me wrong.”
I am never going to accept that nonsense.
If you get to define the scope of debate – you can ALWAYS do so sufficiently to prove correct.
As an example – the 2008 is inarguably the worst recession since the great recession – if you eliminate all other recessions from consideration.
It is inarguably the worst – if you use only the metric of YOUR choice.
It is inarguably the worse – if you measure it one way and all other recessions another.
No, i am never going to allow you to define the scope of a debate – you are not sufficiently honest to agree to that.
I would further note that what you think is off point – isn’t.
Anything involving government is about force ALWAYS,
Judge Rodriguez probably had a lot LEFT WING of help from the outside to come up with that flakey ruling.
Devin Patrick Kelley did the killing,
He’s 100% RESPONSIBLE.
I think it is reasonable to hold others to a limited degree of responsibility where there is a clear duty for them to act.
As I understand it there were numerous instances while in the AF where the killers conduct demonstrated that he would be a threat to others. Further the AF is more than an employer – they have near total responsibility for a individual while they serve.
But 60/40 liability is just nonsense.
Further “But for” logic is nearly always flawed.
In this instance the presumption is that had the AF done their duty the killer would not have been able to get a gun.
That is with near certainty false. He might have been barred from getting a gun LEGALLY, but that does not preclude getting a gun – as we see in Chicago all the time. Nor are guns the only way that people can kill large numbers of others.
It is very rare that a “but for” condition really is critical.
Where there is not a specific duty, holding a third party responsible will ultimately result in chaos.
No one will produce anything – because everything is dangerous
There are none so blind as those who refuse to see
. So the accurate statement would be: People, with guns, kill people.
More homicides by fists than guns.
But how is a manufacturer of a legal item negligent?
Are bucket manufacturers libel for drownings? What about the maker of Step ladders? Or foot stools? My 88 year old mother fell from a step stool while washing her car. She might still be with us if not for that broken hip.
Some legal products are defective. Legality is often just a by product of strong lobbying.
Truly sorry about your mother’s tumble, falls are a serious plague to the elderly. But her fall didn’t have the capacity to kill upwards of 20 people in a very short amount of time.
eb
I hope you are never the victim of a violent crime.
Police as an example are taught to empty their gun into the center of mass of the person they are shooting whenever they are required to use it.
Why ? because our president is an idiot – most of us are not sharpshooters. We are not able to shoot the weapon out of someone’s hands. Because we are really upset when the police shoot someone in the head. because the odds of hitting someone other than the criminal goes up exponentially when you do not aim for the center of mass. And finally because officers have been killed by criminals that they hit half a dozen times.
Sometimes a single shot from a gun – stops a rapist, or murderer. Sometimes the entire clip is not enough.
Sometimes merely brandishing a weapon makes the bad guys go away – in fact less than 1/3 of the time that a crime is thwarted by a gun is the gun actually used.
Most gun owners are not marksmen – though most are better shots than the police. But even more important – most gun owners are just not able to do everything perfectly on the one instance in their lives when they must rely on a gun for their safety.
That is why all guns are not single shot .22’s.
iowan2, so sorry for the loss of your mother.
We should ALWAYS be extremely careful about third party liability for criminal acts.
NO the gun manufacturers do not share liability.
While like Turley and the court I am angry with the Airforce – this is not even close to 50:50 liability.
In fact the concept that liability can easily be divided by percentage is ludicrous.
Criminals are ALWAYS 100% responsible for their crimes and the consequences.
That does not mean that those who fail at an actual public duty have Zero responsibility,
or that other lessor criminals do not have lessor liability.
But we should NEVER buy this leftist nonsense that those who commit crimes are not responsible for them.
Specifically addressing your idiocy regarding gun manufacturers.
Austrailia banned guns.
Mass shootings dropped dramatically.
Mass killings remained constant. Arson among other things increased dramatically.
The people who commit mass shootings – would kill lots of people other ways if they did not have guns.
For $15 in easily obtainable parts from AutoZone you can build a flame thrower – is that how you want mass killers to murder people ?
For even less you can find household chemicals that will produce large amounts of poisonous gas.
If you wish to kill large numbers of people – there is always a way.
The mayor of london is now prosecuting people for carrying butter knives in public.
The rate of violent crime and murder in scottland is higher than it is for whites in the US – despite the complete absence of guns.
It is leftist wishful thinking that guns and violent deaths have any relationship.
Accross the US right now murders in democrat run cities have spiked from 50% to 600% over 2019.
There has been no consequential change in the availability of guns in those cities.
The ONLY thing that has changed is the demonization of police and a drop in agressive law enforcement.
Even the CDC under Obama found that gun ownership correlated strongly to LOWER crime rates.
Violent crime rates by and against legal gun owners are 1/3 that of non-gun owners. While the decline in property crimes is even more dramatic.
Just more evidence leftism is a religion.
It is farcical that those on the left claim to be driven by science – they are as disconected from reality – from science as one can be.
I have addressed C19 with YOU repeatedly over the past year.
The ineffectiveness of government responses to C19 was both predictable and predicted more than a year ago.
AGAIN we have NEVER thwarted even the Flu using any of these policies – and the Flu has a spread rate 1/3-1/2 that of C19.
Simple mathematical models – not the idiocy of the imperial college – told anyone paying attention that none of this would work for a respiratory disease with a spread rate of 2.4-3.8
My point is that YOU and even the “experts” from the left were PREDICTABLY wrong – then as you are NOW.
You have no interest in actual science, or facts, or data, or statistics. I doubt you are capable of adding – you certainly can not multiply ?
The average blue collar worker appears to have a better grasp of reality than those educated in our ivory towers today.
You want to hold various companies responsible for the purported negative effects of their products.
Fine – then they should be rewarded for the societal benefits.
The energy sector alone is responsible for rises in our standard of living that dwarf by orders of magnitude any harms they have caused or any profits they have received.
In the 18th century nearly all power was biological – such as SLAVES. Heat, light, machine power transformed the world – and our standard of living.
In fact they made the world CLEANER that it ever was before. Asthma has shot up – because kids are NOT expose to the amount of dirt they were a century ago and their immune systems have not learned as they should.
In 16th century london the basement of nearly every home was filled with $hit – literally. There was a booming business in $hit as it was dried and sold as fuel. Flies were everywhere. You could not have food exposed for more than a few seconds without a fly landing on it.
But like a typical left wing nut – you are clueless. Would that we could send you back to the 11th century to live (or die quickly) so that you might get a clue how much you benefit from the very things you despise.
Anonymous:
A product manufacturer cannot be responsible for the misuse of their product. A firearm manufacturer has zero control over what it’s aimed at by the purchaser.
Car manufacturers are not liable for DUIs.
Many kidnappers use knives and duct tape, but the manufacturers of knives and duct tape have no say over how their products are used.
This trend is unethical. It is a clear Machiavelian attempt to abolish the right to bear arms by destroying the gun industry. Democrats couldn’t get the 2nd Amendment abolished, and SCOTUS has ruled against various gun control laws as unconstitutional. Their next play is to simply skirt the Constitution and SCOTUS to get what they want by any means, and against the will of the people. Not very “democratic” of them.
Manufacturers can be liable for defective products. An example is if a gun misfires due to a manufacturing defect.
The Democrat Party keeps claiming it doesn’t want to do away with the 2nd Amendment, yet positions like these have become more popular in the party.
Our family have used guns many times. My grandfather stopped a KKK lynch mob with his gun. My father stopped a night time break in simply by chambering a round by our front door. He got a very sincere-sounding apology from the other side of the door. We dispatch rattle snakes on our property with some regularity. My cousins are avid hunters.
We live out in the country. Police response time has always been slow. However, by the county’s own estimate, it’s been expanded to 45 minutes or more due to Democrat-demanded defunding cuts to budgets. We’re on our own out here. If there’s a problem, it will be long over by the time police arrive.
Millions of people lawfully own and use firearms in this country. It is unethical and contrary to jurisprudence to punish the innocent for the deeds of the guilty.
With our porous borders, gang members and cartels will have no trouble skirting gun laws. Every time a gangland shooting takes the life of an innocent child in Chicago, the shooter has broken any number of gun laws.
By definition, law-abiding people follow the laws. Criminals break the law.
Generally third party liability for the bad outcomes as a result of criminal actions requires a failure to perform a duty or to keep a commitment.
I think that condition is arguably met in the case at hand – though the degree of liability is off.
If a gun manufacturer made guns that were tied to biometrics – and the gun did not work when it should have – or did work when it should not have – resulting in harm caused by a criminal – that would be a place for 3rd party liability.
Most liability claims regarding guns are NOT.
Centuries of law exist to prevent “something bad happened, and I want to sue third parties” claims from getting to trial.
Love your response, but as always the question should be why are they attempting to limit/take away gun rights? These people have seen the fallacy of their own reasoning. Gun control in big cities doesn’t work! They cannot point to a single example but still they persist. Again why? That is the question that should send shivers down your spine. Ammo up, stand by, and do not submit!
John R. Lott Jr is the expert on gun violence statistics.
https://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2021/07/08/gun-death_hoax_faked_the_facts_which_the_media_echoed_146051.html
Did anyone force the man to commit murder. Individual responsibility has to be the standard with minimum exceptions.
I beleive the killer is dead.
Further I beleive it has been established that he had mental health issues and that the Air Force was aware of them and that he was a serious risk to others, and did nothing.
Dumbest argument ever. In the aforementioned case of the women sent home from work, why was the manufacturer of the instrument of death (the car) not included in the liability?
Your perspective is emblematic of the problems and social breakdown we face today in this country. Everyone has their unique perspective. How closely that perspective squares with actual reality is the measure of functional sanity. I postulate that your perspective does not closely align with actual reality.
Ridiculous. Guns do NOT kill people. Just as cars do NOT kill people.
So if someone kills another by running over them with their Ford truck, is Ford partially liable for the death? Are knife manufacturers responsible for the millions of stabbings that occur. Will rope manufacturers be held liable for hanging suicides? Where do you draw the line and hold PEOPLE responsible for their own actions? Or maybe we can just blame Trump.
There is liability when a defect in the product results in harm to others.
There is liability when there is a clear duty for a third party to act.
It is extremely rare for their to be either liability by third parties for a persons criminal acts.
The law is supposed to be heavily biased against third party liability for the harms caused by criminal acts.
As I have noted there must be a duty that the third party failed for them to have any liability for the harm of a criminal act.
In this case I think the AF failed at a duty. But that still does not crate a liability close to that of the killer – much less greater than.
I would further note that military service might be one of few instances where mental health red flag gun laws do not have unintended consequences.
One of the problems with mental health red flag laws – and many other red flag laws – is that they incentivize people who need help not to seek that help.
If we allow or require mental health professionals to report people to the government and then bar them from gun ownership as a result, we discourage people from seeking help.
So how much responsibility in % does Facebook, Twitter, MSM, Dem blue state governors get for killing of people, sending helpless senior citizens back to infect and kill thousands of other seniors in nursing homes, for their part of covering up CCP Wuhan bio weapon leak facts, and effectiveness of HCQ, Ivermectin bans along with provable disinformation just to name the easy points then?
And what % of responsibility do the gun manufacturers get for the 1-3 million US citizens a year who use a gun to save their own life/loved ones/strangers lives every year? And the same manufacturers whos guns are used to protect the country, in our military’s, protecting POTUS, and protecting the traitorous congresscritters like the Lt Capitol policeman who executed unarmed Ashley Babbit while he “lay in wait” for his victim?
The only problem with your logic, or lack thereof, is that you would have to demonstrate the Firearms manufacturers are negligent. In order for them to be found negligent they would have to be necessarily in violation of federal law, proven to be manufacturing a product with the intent to kill people, and not investing heavily in gun safety courses and products. Considering the Firearms manufacturers are following the law, do not produce a product which when used properly kills Mass numbers of innocent people and do encourage the years are some of their products to become trained and go through safety courses, only the most deranged, libtarded moron, who hates America, could possibly believe the gun manufacturers could be held to any liability.
eb, you’re an idiot. Why not extend to everybody who knew this jerk? They all have liability. His parents raised a lunatic. His teachers failed to educated and socialize him. His friends knew he was crazy. They are truly accountable for this tragedy.
Further your ridiculous attack on the manufacturer is plain moronic. First of all, the product worked as intended. The operator was mentally ill. Are car makers or brewers held liable for the destruction caused by their products? There would be chaos in the marketplace if we start holding every producer responsible for others stupidity.
You’re an idiot, eb.
Does that apply to automobile manufacturers?
Does that apply to “vaccine/poison” manufacturers?
And then we can file lawsuits against alcohol companies for drunk driving fatalities also. We can hit the tire manufacturer for regular accidents. Do you see where this is going? Guns are not made to kill people, they are made to shoot lead out the barrel. Most guns never shoot anybody
Some guns are made to kill people – and that is a legitimate use – in defense of self and defense of others.
The fact that the purpose of a gun is to kill does not create liability for gun manufacturers.
The choice of how to use a gun – whether to use it for self defense or in a crime lies with the person owning the gun.
Guns do not make people commit murder. Just as cars do not make people drive drunk.
A deadly purpose does not create liability.
Actual negligence does.
Then auto mfgrs should be sueable for vehicle deaths. And not for defects alone.