If at first you don’t succeed, sue, sue again. You may remember that ARMSLIST was the target of a Brady Campaign-backed lawsuit after a man shot up a Wisconsin beauty salon in 2012, killing his wife and two others. He’d bought the gun he used in the crime in a private transaction that had been advertised on ARMSLIST.
That long-running lawsuit was finally brought to a permanent end in November when the US Supreme Court refused to hear the case. Lower courts had already struck the case down, ruling that ARMSLIST is protect by provisions of Communications Decency Act because the online platform is functionally no different that any other seller of advertising.
Now, as the Chicago Sun-Times reports, the widow of a Chicago police officer who was killed in the line of duty in 2018 has filed a similar suit against ARMSLIST.
Oh, and the Brady is behind this one, too.
The 9-millimeter Glock pistol that four-time felon Shomari Legghette allegedly used to kill Bauer in 2018 was sold by a Wisconsin man on Armslist.com, one of the nation’s largest online gun marketplaces.
According to a federal lawsuit filed Wednesday in Milwaukee by Bauer’s wife, Erin, and the nonprofit gun control group Brady, the site negligently allowed sales of weapons without background checks, allowing Legghette to get his hands on the alleged murder weapon.
Why does the Brady Bunch think they’ll be any more successful with this exercise in lawfare quixotic attack on ARMSLIST than they were the last time? Your guess is as good as ours.
“We can’t know what would have happened if Armslist was not negligent…but we do know what did happen: someone who should not have had a gun was able to get one, and a police commander is dead,” Lowy said.
As you can imagine, the cost of fighting off this second attack by Brady, Inc. will be substantial. They’ve set up a web site — ARMSLIST Legal Defense Fund — and are accepting donations to help them cover the considerable legal expenses. If you’d like to help, click here.