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As you’ve probably heard by now, the Connecticut Supreme Court over-ruled a lower court ruling to allow a lawsuit by the survivors and heirs of the Sandy Hook shooting to go forward. This, despite clear protections provided to firearms manufacturers under the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act.

The shooter’s mother — someone who was legally able to purchase a gun — bought the Bushmaster rifle used in the shooting from an FFL, complying with all federal and local laws. But the Connecticut high court, in a textbook example of judicial activism, gazed into the emanations and penumbras of the law and ginned up a justification for letting the suit proceed.

Under the Supremacy Clause, federal law will govern over state law. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act is intended to avoid precisely the result reached by the Connecticut Supreme Court. The PLCAA puts firearms manufacturers on the same plane with all others. If their products are not defective–if they do not malfunction–they are not liable. If someone stabs a victim to death with a knife, the victim’s heirs can’t sue the knife manufacturer. It is the same with firearms. …

(T)he Remington rifle was bought by Adam Lanza’s mother, Nancy Lanza. She was a perfectly legal and legitimate buyer. Adam Lanza, the insane teenager who carried out the Sandy Hook massacre, murdered his mother and took her guns to use in his rampage. So there is no possible theory of “negligent entrustment” against Remington, or anyone else.

The Connecticut Supreme Court’s decision is not a good faith exercise of judicial judgment. The four-judge majority engaged in political activism by issuing an anti-gun ruling that is obviously wrong under the Constitution and federal law. It will be reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court. But there is a lesson here: liberals love to talk about the rule of law, but what they mean is rule by lawyers. Rule by lawyers who dictate policies that the people and their elected representatives don’t want, and that are likely to be at odds with the Constitution. This Connecticut decision is a prime example.

John Hinderaker in Connecticut Supreme Court Makes War on Civil Rights

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98 COMMENTS

  1. I hope the Supreme Court when it passes this as unconstitutional. Makes the judges in Connecticut personaly liable for Remingtons court costs.

    • Plaintiffs pay, at which point they file bankruptcy. The plaintiffs were probably carefully selected judgement-proof brokes or promised money from Bloomberg or other moneybag. The law should have made plaintiff’s attorney’s liable for all court costs and allowed treble punitive damages and disbarment for suits flagrantly violating the intent of the law..

      • You think all the lawyers in Washington are going to pass a law saying Lawyers are responsible…….for anything?

        You be crazy man!

    • Personal responsibility in a case of judicial misconduct? Egads man next you will suggest that politicians actually go to prison when they commit crimes or somehow be barred from office if they prove to be treacherous.

      So how are the snowbirds lately?

      • Please Please Please take them back!!! Everyone drives 10mph under the speed limit and it takes me three months to find a parking spot at the local hardware store.

        • The 4.5 months of winter are the closest I get to peace up here (and safest driving conditions) but yeah they are insufferable up here once things thaw out. Thankfully that crowd will thin out over the next decade. Hopefully they will not totally ruin Florida and the Carolinas in the meantime. Personally I would go for rural Alabama or Georgia. Let me have my guns and don’t go screwing with liberty.

  2. This article lets out the biggest piece of information, also the information it should of been focused around.

    The court made this ruling based on its decision that Remington marketed the Bushmaster rifle in such a way to make it desirable for the said maniac to want so badly that he would kill his own mother for it.

    THIS is what the backlash to Remington will be about, is if they encouraged violence through advertising.

    If it was as basic as the article states than any idiot would agree they have no argument, but just as the left leaves out information, so has this article.

    Please be more thorough before rushing to print, things like this make us look just as mis-informative as the news.

    • Oh now Bob, why ruin a perfectly good TTAG rant by bring facts to the table. The article is not supposed to be about the truth, but instead more high octane fuel for the reactionary masses who will tap their mouse on the large breasted clickbait during their testosterone-filled rage at the judicial system, the liberals, the dems, the gun grabbers, all while forgetting that we collectively agree that Remington as a company sucks donkeys. But Big Green’s poor quality products and lack of innovation are a mere footnote at this juncture. Hate is what sells eyeballs to Russian trolls, not the truth.

        • No, he’s right.
          Some things are written with intent to sell based off the fear of the leftists or Democrats.

          They know everyone’s on the edge of their seat waiting for the day they come take your guns so pieces of information are purposefully left out to inflate the articles but like he said, when it comes down to everyone ganging up on Remington for their shitty performance you get detailed research on every aspect of the company.

          People who focus at what they want to be true will work harder at it than something they don’t want to be true.

          Lets take the Sandy Hook ordeal for example.

          The ones who think its a hoax have a long list of reasons it seems like a hoax.
          But the real way to find out if it was fake or not is to research as to if it could possibly have been true.

          If you dug deep into trying to prove it to be true and came up empty handed, then you would have your proof for it to be false.
          Instead, no work is done to show how it could be legit and instead MORE effort is put into making things like “crisis actors” seem more plausible.

          Personally I think Sandy Hook was set up, meaning it did happen but wasn’t an unplanned accident.

          This gives truths to both sides, you can still have crisis actors and shady information along with proof of an actual event.

        • Bill, people using leftist agenda terms like “collectively” and “Russian trolls” are absolutely leftist trolls. Don’t be fooled. This has nothing to do with whether SH was a staged event or it wasn’t.

        • Bill, you think the Sandyhook massacre was a set up? That is fascinating.

          Tell us more, do you believe anyone was actually killed during the event? Who do you think the real shooters were? If it was Adam Lanza, how did they motivate him to commit the act and then commit suicide?

          Do you believe that at least 26 Connecticut state troopers were involved in the deception? Do you have the courage to discuss this with any of these Connecticut state troopers, and tell them you think they are part of a hoax event?

          “In this Dec. 21, 2012 file photo, Connecticut State Police confer in the rain at the intersection of a closed road in the Sandy Hook village of Newtown, Conn. In a first-of-its-kind program, the Connecticut State Police assigned troopers to each victim’s family to help with whatever they needed after the shooting tragedy. The detail ended officially with the funerals, but many of the officers are staying in close contact with the families they helped through the tragedy. (AP Photo/Seth Wenig, File)”

        • “Personally I think Sandy Hook was set up”

          I’ll bet it was aliens on the Grassy Knoll from Area 51 in an International conspiracy to sap and impurify all of our precious bodily fluids with fluoridated water in order to cover up that Hitler survived the war and moved to a split level house Secaucus, NJ with the Illuminati.

        • “If you dug deep into trying to prove it to be true and came up empty handed, then you would have your proof for it to be false.”

          That’s not the way any of this works.

        • Miner49er,

          If it was Adam Lanza, how did they motivate him to commit the act and then commit suicide?

          The same way that Jim Jones convinced his followers to drink the Kool-Aide.

          Newsflash: it isn’t all that hard to “program” a person with pertinent “qualities” to carry out some awful acts.

        • God willing, we will prevail, in peace and freedom from fear, and in true health, through the purity and essence of our natural fluids.

        • Uncommon sense, you have an interesting hypothesis regarding deep programming of Adam Lanza. Please share what evidence, if any, you have to support your theory.

          If you have no evidence, then we must regard your statement as empty speech.

    • If the plaintiffs win by using the bad influence of media tactic, then numerous other lawsuits will quickly follow. Everyone who has lung cancer can sue all those actors and actresses who still smoke on screen for encouraging them to enjoy deadly cigarettes. Violent video game makers action box manufacturers will get sued by dead gangsta’s kinfolk. Anti-business democrat party tactics at it’s best.

      • You mean like all the cigarette commercials you don’t see today?
        Or bugs bunny smoking in cartoons?

        I think they have a very strong foothold for this to work.

        What they will eventually get isn’t a direct lawsuit, but major restrictions on advertisement.
        Think of everywhere you see firearms adds and you don’t see tobacco adds.

        • That would assume that they can convince a court that Lanza was using the gun as intended and advertised. Cigarettes are meant to be smoked. Using them for their intended purpose is dangerous.

          I’ve seen a lot of gun advertising and none of it has suggested that any gun is “the preferred model of discerning school shooters and child killers”.

          This is why that whole “the AR is only meant to kill people” meme is dangerous. It’s like arguing that Drano is a cocktail meant to be drunk in large quantities. If that becomes the assumed design of Drano then S.C. Johnson is in trouble.

          The AR wasn’t built for school shootings.

      • Porsche is screwed! You realize how many speeding tickets that the company is going to have to pay? Retroactively?

    • The court did NOT “decide” that Remington negligently marketed its products, it held ONLY that a theory of negligent marketing is outside the protections of the PLCAA. The appeal as it was presented raised only questions of law, not facts, and, under the rules of procedure, the Court assumed the truth of the allegations of the complaint. It is still up to plaintiffs to prove their claims, which everyone agrees will be difficult if not impossible.

      • Could you provide a definition of “negligent marketing”? Isn’t ALL marketing negligent, since it always leaves out the negative aspects of whatever product is being marketed?

      • Yep, they’ll have to prove that the perpetrator actually saw a Bushmaster ad (and acted because of it). Unless he had one taped to his bedroom wall, that seems insurmountable.

      • This is nothing more than another ploy to use the fear of financial loss to influence commerce.

        If by frivolous litigation, they can cause manufactures to go bankrupt, they, in essence, have won a battle against the lawful sale of firearms and infringed on the 2nd A.

        The puppet masters pulling the strings and bank rolling the lawyers have already committed to spending exorbitant amounts to fulfill their anti-gun agendas.

    • Remington “Marketed”? What “marketing”? Remington did/does a small amount of ADVERTISING. Same as most gun mfg typically is print ad in outdoors/shooting magazines. In other words, “preaching to the choir”. Which damn few teenage boys are EVER going to see.

      “Marketing” is largely just academic BS.

      Perhaps Lanza became aware for the AR playing some idiotic video game. Or just that is what mom owned.

  3. State’s Democrats have already passed numerous laws which clearly violate the Bill of Rights & Supremacy. The SCOTUS, under previous Democratic majority, has itself violated the first amendment by making it applicable solely on public property – only 1/3 of the United States.

    The Democrat’s agenda is clearly to pass as many different state laws as possible, clogging up the justice system for years with appeals. Without injunctions (impossible in Democrat-controlled states), these laws will remain in force for up to a decade before being overturned. The firearms industry will be sorely affected, losing thousands of jobs. Meanwhile millions of lawful citizens will have their core civil rights violated. Many will die without a way to protect themselves from the evil & ill people who’ll not follow these laws.

    But of course, this isn’t about school safety, reducing the murder rate, or saving the children. It’s about control and creating a dependency on huge government.

  4. Remington will insist that all autopsies be examined to show cause of death. The case should not proceed if cause of death is failure to treat the victims in a timely manner. For what its worth, the FBI doesn’t seem to record any deaths in Sandy Hook that are referred to in this case. Popcorn & soda, please!

  5. Here’s a piece of truth. The lawsuit will flop, and when it does, the disgusting billionaire-funded anti-freedom groups backing this BS will bail, leaving greaving, uneducated parents on the hook for millions in legal fees. SMH.

    • No doubt they have read it. Instead, the majority concluded that a claim of negligent marketing is outside the protections of the Act.

  6. This a prime example of the Swamp (activist judges) in serious need of cleansing. Unfortunately these judges can’t be voted out and impeachment is very difficult. Which leaves a difficult choice. Are they allowed to continue to act in defiance of the Constitution or are they removed by force. We now live in difficult times in our nation. Choices will need to be made by everyone. Difficult choices. We have a system. That at it’s foundation is a good one. Unfortunately it has been allowed to rot from within. Why/How? There are many answers to these questions. Apathy do to being to comfortable in our lives. Feeling that we can’t make a difference because our vote doesn’t matter. No one in power listens or cares about our concerns. These are just some of the reasons or better some of the excuses we all have used to justify our Apathy and disinterest in the system. Now as we see Our Rights being nullified by Individuals we were never allowed to vote for or as in some states where judges are elected. We didn’t want to be bothered with checking to see where they stood on the issues. We find ourselves slowly backing up to the abyss of Controlled Tyranny. The only question left to be answered is how far will you back up? When will enough be enough? Each person will answer that question in time. Keep Your Powder Dry…

  7. “But there is a lesson here: liberals love to talk about the rule of law, but what they mean is rule by lawyers.”

    There’s another –

    To a Leftist, the ends *always* justify the means, and break as many eggs as needed to make that omelette…

  8. Winning this specific lawsuit against Remington is/was not the purpose of the anti-2A forces pushing this. They have already won what they want, which is an unending fishing expedition against Remington through the discovery process. They will subpoena and fish and subpoena and fish until they dredge up one single email from a Remington that can be twisted into a “smoking gun” and then it’s game over for Remington. They will bankrupt them by tying them up in court and driving the stock price to zero. In the modern information age, somebody, somewhere said something on the company email system that the antis can twisted into a “smoking gun”.

  9. If guns cause people to commit crimes; then cigarette lighters cause lung cancer; the golden arches can cause heart disease; knives, forks, and spoons can cause obesity; a book of matches can cause some to commit arson; hot tubs and swimming pools can cause some to drown; and box cutters and jet airplanes can cause tall buildings in New York to collapse.

  10. There’s only 1 industry in the US that is 100% shielded by the Federal government from liability when it’s products can and do cause unjury and death.

    • yep, and for great reason… the Plaintiff’s Bar would neuter the 2A through settlements if not for the PLCAA.

    • Uh, Remington got class-action sued for its malfunctioning triggers, and you can’t sue Honda because your ex ran over your foot with a CR-V…what the fuck are you talking about?

      The Lawful Commerce act is moot, because it’s already impossible to win those sorts of suits. But that didn’t make it clear enough to idiot gun banners tilting at windmills with taxpayer money, and since we stupidly don’t have “loser pays” in this country, that means you have to make it abundantly clear to plaintiffs & judges via legislation that this sort of targeted frivolous litigation will not be tolerated.

      What should have happened, is a consortium of gun companies suing Brady out of existence for court harassment, but since those guys only sue through proxies, that won’t work to stop them either. The law was the most efficient way to stop Brady’s little shake-down racket.

    • Bull shit. The PLCAA is entirely consistent with the law of products liability for all products. The manufacturers o f firearms are still liable if their product is defective and causes injury, for example, by blowing up in your hand because it was improperly manufactured, or chain firing because it was improperly designed. But the CANNOT be sued under a claim that the product is “unreasonably dangerous” simply because someone got shot. The liability is the same as Ford: it was liable for its negligent design and manufacture of the gas tank on the Pinto, but it was not and is not liable simply because some idiot behind the wheel crashes into someone or something and causes injury.

    • The gun industry is not protected against poor quality. If the gun works as it should, it is fine. If it blows up, or causes damage to someone using it, the firearm company can be sued. how can you hold the manufacturer liable for someone misusing their product?

      • And doubly so in this case. They shouldn’t even have standing to mention Remington, since that’s not who the gun(s) were purchased from. No firearm is purchased from the manufacturer. They only sell to distributors, who in turn only sell to FFLs, who sell to the public.

  11. Sorry, lots of big words and no pictures, read Rogue Nation, the Worlds’ only Super Power, by William Blum. Then go out and practice, a lot. -30-

  12. East coast rotten is all I see,,, just like the west coast,,, all activist judges & politicians,,, Obummer,,, Clinton,,, even a Bush put some real losers in the courts,,,& activist lawyers go judge shopping every time they get a controversial or high profile case,,, most of the time they succeed & the case ends up in the Supreme Court,,, that’s why President Trump needs to get more justices appointed… M A G A …🇺🇸

  13. Meanwhile in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the City of Pittsburgh wants to pass its own gun laws in direct violation of the state’s preemption. The gun activists aren’t taking this laying down, however, and have stated they will file Private Criminal Complaints against all the city council members who vote yea on the proposal, and the mayor, too, should he sign it. The private criminal complaints will cite Official Oppression, Conspiracy to Commit Same, Violation of State Law prohibiting such actions and Conspiracy to Commit Same, and the County District Attorney already announced he would follow through on such.

    Holding politicians responsible for their actions? It’s a possibility, and the Pittsburgh politicians may indeed be rethinking their course of action seeing as to what the possible consequences are.

  14. gun grabbers will go full court-packer when Ginsburg dies and Trump replaces her with 2A-friendly Amy Comey Barrett.

  15. The CO courts briefly allowed suits against Bushmaster after Aurora, too.

    WTF do these Brady types have such a hard-on for Bushmaster, specifically? They aren’t the cheapest or most common variety, and they are big enough to defend themselves in court, so what gives? Are they stuck in ’92 where only a couple companies made ARs or something?

  16. The sad notion by this decision …is that CT seems to be a cesspool of random lawyer Neo-Liberal private agendas, under the COLOR of LAW. For 5 decades the lawyer run legislature has been destroying the constitution and the protections it guarantees. The Rule of Law and the courts is the only alternative to violence, when the court becomes the maker of law to the tune of their own agenda (politically motivated) under a NEO-Liberalism path, what are the people to do?

    None of the CT residents have any idea who is making laws and stealing their tax dollars, How is it the Chief Justice Robinson receiving a pay check in conjunction with his judge welfare check ..is also the managing director of an Executive Branch none profit for helping inmates : https://cpa-ct.org/ $1,000,000.00 of state funding being controlled by the judiciary ?

    Not for nothing, the chief Justice Robinson, is a criminal

    I think Judges should just focus on the “RULE OF LAW” and not their non-profits, wait is this the same thing everyone hates trump for? Hmmmmm? but double dipping in CT is okay as long as you are violating the Constitution ?

    At least the Mafia has rules, Judicial Mafia of CT has none.

  17. The people of Sandy Hook are angry at Alex Jones who says it was a hoax.

    I’m angry at the people of Sandy Hook who say the Second Amendment is a hoax and that I don’t have an individual right to Arms.

    • They should be angry at the Lanza family and anyone who saw Adams insanity yet did nothing. But they bulldozed her house and the father doesn’t have shit so they go after deeper pockets. Bonus points for disarming every one. Extra credit for book deals.
      None of this brings people back or addresses the mental issues that led up to it.
      People are grieved, pissed, and want to change the world. Naturally we don’t agree our rights should be tossed for such reasons. What other rights are next?

      • I don’t care what happened to them when they use a family tragedy to take away my civil rights.

        To put it bluntly these white people who live in a nice area who never expected to be attacked where in fact attacked. End of story. Now they want to take away the means of self-defense from people who don’t live in very nice areas. People who in fact fear that they can be attacked. Witnessed an attack and now fear for their lives, because white strangers in a nice neighborhood want to take their guns away. Or prevent them from even getting a gun.

        The Parkland investigation included the number of times the sheriff’s department was called to thhe Cruze family home. However the Sandy Hook investigation did not include the knowledge that the Connecticut Sheriff’s Department knew that Adam Lanza was a pedophile and it threatened to murder children.

        There is a cover-up about the Sandy Hook murders. But not the cover-up most people think. Why does the sheriff in Connecticut still have a job?

        • So how do feel about the government attempting to remove your rights for you make medically informed decisions for yourself and your family because some families are experiencing the tragedy of a weeklong rash and fever? And if someone were to die from the measle(death rates is between 1:10,000 and 1:500,000 depending on the source), would that justify to you the removal of your rights to make your own decisions for yourself and your family?

        • FYI
          Pg2

          Your question is off topic. But you have no problem correct, with american indians being killed by the millions from yellow fever, colera, the flue, or other illnesses they were never exposed to until the white europeans came to the continent?????

          SAVAGE: MEDIA ‘HIDING’ ILLEGAL-ALIEN DISEASE THREAT
          ‘I am not a racist. I am not an alarmist. I am an epidemiologist’
          https://www.wnd.com/2014/07/savage-media-hiding-illegal-alien-disease-threat/

          “Barack Obama Is Bringing Disease to America”
          https://www.thenewamerican.com/usnews/immigration/item/19091-barack-obama-is-bringing-disease-to-america

          “British man who deliberately infected five partners with HIV is sentenced to life in prison”
          https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/to-your-health/wp/2018/04/18/british-man-who-deliberately-infected-five-partners-with-hiv-is-sentenced-to-life-in-prison/?utm_term=.c3ca9aedeef2

        • So you dodge the question and refuse to answer directly? No surprise. You have balls to criticize poiiticians for doing the exact same as you do here. It was very predictable you would avoid answering because your answer would expose your hypocrisy and ignorance.

        • You did not answer my question. Parents can refuse to vaccinate their children. But they don’t want to suffer the consequences of their actions. Which is quarantine from the community.

          Do you believe people can be, and should be, forcibly quarantined?

          Are you one of the members of the three L’s? Libertarians, Liberals and the Left, who believe you have a right to infect another person?

        • Pg2
          BTW
          Is it ok to defend my family from an infected person by shooting them and setting the dead body on fire???
          Because that is exactly what was done for hundreds of years all over the world.

          Or would you prefer more modern methods like quarantine and vaccinations?????

        • Chris, you’re full of shit. You are blatantly avois the question and try to strawman to justify it. You made a statement about politicians using dead kids in a ruse to attack your rights. I asked you how your position on vaccines isn’t the same exact thing. You continue to avoid and dodge.

        • Look up the “Robbie Parker” interview. This “Sandy Hook parent” is seen laughing and joking until he is advised that it is time for the “interview”. It is then he puts on his “game face” and goes into “mourning mode”.
          If that is not proof that Sandy Hook was “engineered”, I don’t know what is.

  18. That’s almost like living in a really nice house and getting sued for having an attractive nuisance by someone who hurt himself when breaking into it.

  19. “It will be reversed by the U.S. Supreme Court.”

    If given cert,it will be over turned,the guilty such as the state of Ct.court should foot the costs involved as a penalty of said activism.

  20. Rule of law — Using lawyers to advocate some other rationale for what I want.

    Apply the law — dig around until u fond some fig leaf to cover what you wanted in the first place.

  21. Lawyers are advocates who start with “Who’s the cient?” and “How do we want this to come out.l?” Then they go trolling for

    – candidate facts they can claim are true,

    – fragments of laws they can claim are relevant,

    – vague principles they can claim are coherent,

    – aggressive pronouncements they can claim are interpretations

    … to gin up a rationale for what they’ve decided already.

    The notion of law practice as deriving some results from law as it stands is backwards from the fact. It’s the opposite of engineering, where ou can want what you want, but in practice you apply reliable facts — the ones that won’t go away, even when you don’t like them — and robust techniques — the ones that produce results that stick — and you get what you get.

    Activist judges and agenda-driven administration, the same. “Independent” agencies, even more so: the strategy of explictly carving out citizen no-go zones of free interpretation where self-government (for our own advantage) does not apply.

    This problem is lawyer-thinking — the way they are trained to think — has silently invaded every kind of activity, especially all of politics. Lawyer thinking isn’t necessarily fatal is the people are still able to think in starting with what you know, and seeing how that comes out.

    So,
    — Push back on laws, regs, n other stuff they can leverage.

    — Vote, protest, sue, pool defense funds, and any other way to “punch back twice as hard” as a famous community organizer advised.

    — Don’t argue on their turf; argue on yours. Their game is “find an ‘argument’ for what they want, then make you refute.” Make your argument, your way and dare them to refute it. Behind laws, rules, and other words, tag up on reality: For what? Says who? How do you know that works?

    Make the arguments…
    — Common law, and the plain reading of the 2A, the federal statute.
    — You wanna single out legal stuff you dont like; there’s a word for that.
    — You wanna sue to get what you can’t by law; there’s a word for that.
    — You wanna work in concert with others to do illegal stuff under color of law; tbere’s a couole words for that.

    And thow in a couple Akinsky rules on top. Every onw of these high-profile propaganda cases is an opportunity to Streisand-effect them.

  22. Ohhhh. Censor, censor, censor. Join TTAG and delete things.
    I can post it over and over again, you know. At least until you ban me.
    OK maybe I can’t. Not sure just how you did that, but what about this:
    crisis cast dot com ?

  23. Someone should file a lawsuit against the police officers who cowered in the parking lot while they waited for the shooting to stop.

  24. The idiots on the CT court should be held liable for whatever lawyer costs Remington has to incur that the plaintiffs (definitely) won’t pay when the case is thrown out again.

    • Best laugh of the day! Like the people who think that elections in the US are free and fair. Bhuwahahahaha. Pull the other leg, its got bells on. 🙂

  25. If anyone thinks that this court case is going to go to the Supreme Court who will overturn it and that will end it is nuts. Lawyers will be able to make a killing once you can sue a company like Ford and Seagrams for drunk driving that kills someone or any other number of scenarios. Just like they forced the dictionary people to change the definition of “assault weapon” to include semi-auto guns they will keep at it until they win.

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