The gavel vs. the gun
Thursday was a good day for all those seeking to impose some sanity on America’s gun laws, which leave innocent people at the mercy of gun-wielding fanatics and the industry that giddily profits by arming them. Parents of first-graders slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary School leaped over a significant legal hurdle when a Connecticut judge ruled against the maker of the AR-15 — the weapon that, wielded by Adam Lanza, cut down 20 children and six adults — and is allowing the case to proceed to the next phase.
There’s still a chance that Judge Barbara Bellis will decide that Remington Arms, which churns the assault rifle off its assembly lines, gets blanket immunity thanks to an odious federal law passed in 2005 as a gift to the National Rifle Association.
Which means there’s still a chance that Remington will manage to dodge a trial, including the crucial discovery process, in which the gun company would be forced to reveal important details about the way it does business.
But because the judge refused the defendants’ demand to throw the case out of court — dozens of other similar cases have tripped and fallen at this stage — the odds just got longer.
The ruling puts on the defensive the National Rifle Association, Republicans who take their marching orders from the gun lobby — and Bernie Sanders, who voted for the immunity law and now coldly says “no” when asked whether gun crime victims should be able to sue manufacturers.
Hillary Clinton, in contrast, voted against the law and stands with the Sandy Hook families seeking to challenge the gun maker in court — and pledges to get the immunity repealed as President.
The statute at issue is known by an Orwellian title: The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act. It broadly insulates gun companies, with a few narrowly drawn exceptions, from having to answer for their actions.
No other industry gets protections quite like that. It’s no small irony that Sanders, who regularly rails against “corporate greed,” found in the gun companies a batch of business behemoths he could love.
But one of the exceptions written into the law — the biggest one, for the purposes of this case — is known as “negligent entrustment.” Translated from legalese, it’s when a person or party irresponsibly hands something dangerous to someone else, with what should have been knowledge that something terrible was bound to happen.
The theory of the Sandy Hook case is that despite mass shooting after mass shooting involving the AR-15 and other weapons of war, Remington went right on not only making the gun, but aggressively and seductively marketing it as a killing machine to civilians ill-equipped to handle it.
It’s an argument the anguished families of Newtown should have every right to make in court. And now they’re one big step closer to getting the chance.