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On Guns, Clinton Runs Both Left and Right, Depending on Her Audience – Thus surprising absolutely no one . . .

Tamir Rice settlement should help educate kids on guns, Cleveland police union president says – Really? Kids in Cleveland will stop playing with guns because Rice’s parents — who got a big check from the city — will tell them not to? More like lipsticking the “he got what he deserved” pig previously presented by the po-po union prez.

America Is About to See How Guns Used in Mass Shootings Are Marketed – “That’s because (plaintiff attorney Katherine Mesner-Hage) and her co-council have constructed a creative PLCAA exemption, claiming, in essence, that the gun Adam Lanza used in the Sandy Hook massacre was specifically marketed as a killing machine. As part of discovery, they’ll dig through the gunmaker’s internal company memos and try to prove that the company was negligent.” Only in Connecticut would this suit have gotten so far in the face of PLCAA protections. Or new Jersey. Hawaii too. Illinois?

Michael Stipe: Governor, please veto this gun bill – R.E.M. is D.O.A. for the POTG, if you know what I mean.

Nova Armory (courtesy washintonpost.com)
Arlington gun store’s owner sues critics, says opponents issued death threats – “Protests are as American as apple pie, as pro-American as civil rights protests, as boycotts of grapes,” Levine said. “If this lawsuit succeeds, the Montgomery (Ala.) bus company ought to sue Martin Luther King and the civil rights movement for that boycott because they wanted to shut down that business.” Not he flip side: “There’s been all sorts of creepy stuff by people with a morbid obsession, a neurotic obsession, with firearms,” the owner said. “They are really dangerous people.”

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Respective peers. Other high-income countries. Nothing dubious about that.

Pa. court refuses to void jail term for killer who shot rifle at cop during car chase – “He is [already] serving a life prison term after pleading guilty to first-degree murder in February for the September 2013 slaying of a 32-year-old man who owed him money. Negron-Rosario took a plea deal to avoid a possible death sentence for that killing in Harrisburg. It marked his second murder conviction. Authorities said Negron-Rosario served 13 years in prison on a 2001 conviction for a murder in Puerto Rico. He was 15 when he killed a 16-year-old boy in that case.”

48 COMMENTS

  1. Kind of like her phony southern accent that comes and goes depending on where she is campaigning.

    Why anyone, liberal or otherwise, would trust this woman is beyond me.

  2. Michael Stipe is still alive?!? I thought he died of AIDS back in the 90s.

  3. I don’t see how Mesner-Hage got passed the motion to dismiss. The AR in question was not sold to Adam Lanza, so therefore he could not have been influenced by the marketing. (Or even if he was, since he is dead they can never prove it.) That was one of the keys in the Big Tobacco cases–that the plaintiff was “victimized” by the marketing and “sold” on the “coolness” of smoking, none of which exists here. And a lot of those cases had to do with the fact that the consumption of tobacco can and does lead to cancer, a fact not disclosed in the marketing materials, but that is now required by federal law. The “militaristic” marketing of ARs demonstrates, if anything (I being one who pays no attention to marketing as a general principle) is to demonstrate the ruggedness of the firearm, not its “lethality.” One has to make the (often spouted) leap of logic to the conclusion (or assumption if you prefer) that ARs are “more lethal” than other firearms, which is in fact not true.I have a pretty good idea where the discovery will go, but we will have to wait and see how far it gets before the Court or the Court of Appeal) refuses to allow it to proceed; one thing for sure is that it will be a massive fishing expedition that will cost hundreds of thousands of dollars. (As an attorney, I think it was particularly stupid of plaintiff’s counsel to admit that they have no idea what they are looking for, suggesting that at this point all they have is a “pleading” case, meaning they have stated a cause of action but have absolutely no facts to support it.)

    • Your analysis would be spot on if the pertinent force behind this was tort law and not judicial activism. The courts can repeal the PLCAA just as easily as they repealed the 2nd Amendment, by ignoring it.

    • I just want to make sure I understand this correctly. they are trying to force an exemption in the protection of lawful Commerce in arms act by using as an example a gun which was stolen from its murdered owner and then used in a crime. I’m confused as to how the marketing of a weapon in any shape manner or form is pertinent to this. Since the owner of the gun was murdered and the Firearms stolen from her after her murder what does the protection of lawful Commerce in arms act have to do with anything. this should have been an open-and-shut case to start with but it appears judicial activism is at work

      • The Act allows actions for negligence against sellers and manufacturers, hence the action against Badger Arms for its connection to a straw sale. The angle here is “negligent marketing,” i.e. that the manufacturers knew or should have known that its marketing would appeal to operational operators (who would then buy their firearms and commit heinous crimes, presumably). The connection is very slim, and even the judge recognized it as much, but allowed it to proceed anyway, declining to foreclose the action at this point in time before the facts are known. The legal theory is the same as used against the tobacco industry; the industry had actual knowledge of the dangers posed by its products, but conspired to deny, obfuscate or ignore the evidence and to engage in marketing designed to appeal to youth, i.e., the next generation of smokers.

        • The problem with this theory is that anyone who knows anything about guns knows that ARs aren’t especially lethal, most particularly those in the industry. The standard AR is chambered in a middling caliber, and it’s just regular old semi-auto. There’s nothing about it that screams super deadly to anyone who actually has a clue.

        • If the case goes to trial the verdict will be determined by emotion, not reason. Quoting muzzle energies will not sway a jury when dead kids are involved.

        • I think the point is that the marketing is completely irrelevant in this case. The retard didn’t buy the gun, he stole it after murdering its owner. So even if the company’s slogan was “Bushmaster: Shoots up schools better than the rest!”, it would still not matter, because the person who committed the crime with the gun didn’t buy it. He just took the gun that was most easily available to him.

        • Another problem with their approach is that the country has been blanketed by anti-gun propaganda for decades. Is there anyone, even that mentally defective little twerp, who hasn’t heard the Guns Are Bad And Wrong spiel from the public media at least a few hundred times in their lives?

          Heck, you could make a decent case that it was the constant demonizing of “assault rifles” as the ultimate baby-killing machines that led Lanza and others to obsess over them as a means to their evil ends.

      • And why aren’t they suing the manufacturer of the .22LR rifle that AL used to kill his mother in order to get the AR? It was obviously sufficiently lethal for that job.

        Along with all the other problems with this suit I fail to see how you can make a case by claiming that the legal product the defendant is selling is marketed as better at its intended use than its competitors’ similar product. This is political theater, pure and simple, and the judges are in on it.

    • I’m hearing that the “Motion to Dismiss” was actually in the nature of a plea to the jurisdiction, and the substance of the PLCAA was not considered. I would like to think that is true, and that when the time comes, the statute will be given its proper deference and effect. But we ARE talking about a Connecticut state judge, after all….

    • Katherine Mesner-Hage’s statement near the end of the article says everything about how asinine these people can be. Regarding retailers selling guns that will end up on the black market.: “So for instance, there are plenty of gun dealers who sell 150 guns to someone at a gun show, and then that person drives across state lines and sells them out of the back of their truck to people who can’t legally buy a gun.” In what universe does someone buy, at retail, 150 AR-15s @ $1200 a pop and load them up in a truck to sell to criminals on the black market? At what I would assume would be a profit. When we know any criminal can purchase a stolen handgun for a small price without the chance of it being traced back to anyone. Never mind that AR type rifles used in crimes are statistically almost zero percent.

  4. Just listened to her Orwellian victory speech. Jobs for middle class…yes the ones taken from them by illegals. Be a superpower in clean energy…yes make poor people pay 25 cents per kilowatt hour instead of natural gas at 9 cents, Rights for women & gays…exception being the second amendment…working to get rid of it. From FDR to Obama continue the progressive path…democratic cities in decline.

    Mind boggling madness.

  5. Stipe:

    Governor Deal has until May 1st to sign, veto, or do nothing to the Georgia campus carry bill. It’s my understanding that if he doesn’t sign or veto the bill by May 1st then it becomes law anyway. (I hope I’m not wrong about that.) If any of you are from Georgia, please take time to contact the Governor with a polite, tactful request to sign the bill. His “contact us” page can be found here: https://gov.georgia.gov/contact-us-0

  6. Hillary is going to be our next President, thanks to Trump the Orange Doofus. Thanks, GOP.

    Stock up on ammo while you can–we’re in for a bumpy four-to-eight years..

    • Why the GOP? You ought to thank Ted Cruz for Trump. His entire strategy was based on using Trump to knock out his rivals. First Walker and then Rubio. Florida was the turning point. It was more important to Cruz to knock out Rubio than let Trump get all the delegates.

      • Relax. If Trump pulls of the win in Cleveland and in November it will much the same as in the past. There will be no wall, no repatriated money from foreign lands, no repeal of obamacare, no reduction in handouts, no immigration reform, no national reciprocity and no reduction in debt, spending, regulations or size of government. It will be just like an establishment guy won.
        Doofus doesn’t even talk about these things anymore.

      • That’s what happens when you start out the race with 17 different candidates. It’s inevitable a tactic will emerge that will whittle down the numbers, and that’s hardly Ted Cruz’s fault. Ben Carson wanted to do that as well, but didn’t have the ground game to pull it off.

        Trump’s not my first choice, and I barely trust him to adhere to Constitutional principles. But I think the much reported ease that Clinton will defeat him is vastly overblown. She has plenty of problems herself, and has been defeated on the road to the White House before.

        But as someone else put it: “If you like Trump, you have the GOP establishment to thank for that. If you despise Trump, you only have the GOP establishment to blame for that.”

        • Cruz is the one who created “THE ESTABLISHMENT.” He came to DC to create the angry voter and overthrow the leadership so he could take it over. Do you really think he believed his filibuster that shut down the government would work? The sole purpose of the exercise was to set up Boehner and McConnell for failure. He failed to anticipate that someone else would exploit the anger and when Trump did he played along waiting for the inevitable collapse that never came. Epic fail.

  7. And a driver in a Ford, Chevy, Audi, or other vehicle the company is not held accountable for the death caused by the driver. So guns are different??? Not!!1

    • The attack is focused on marketing, and in the example you gave (which may have actually been tried) would be like saying that the advertising showing drivers engaging in high speed antics, power slides, etc, encourages drivers to whom the car is marketed to engage in similar (mis)conduct, and therefore the manufacturers should be liable when someone does what their advertising encourages people to do. (Which is probably why there is a disclaimer in EVERY ad: “Professional driver on closed course. Do not attempt this …”)

  8. Everybody hurts, sometimes. My eyes hurt after reading about Michael Stipe’s failure to think through the issue using facts, evidence, and coming to a conclusion with reason, before talking.

  9. Why aren’t Tamir Rice’s parents in jail for neglegence? I seem to recall something about “free range parents” somewhere who were arrested for just letting their kids walk to mcdonalds…

    • Rice was 12 at the time of his murder.
      And his older sister was in the park with him.
      12 is the age where you stop qualifying for a child care tax credit and start thinking about babysitting jobs.

  10. Hillary is a gungrabber. She’s been pretty clear about that. Like Romney campaigning against Obamacare, no one is buying whatever pro-gun BS she’s shoveling.

    • The Democrats have decided that for this election cycle their constituents – low-information voters – are going to buy the gun control business and that they can sell it that the Republicans either want guns in order to shoot minorities or that they are heartless and care more about gun company profits than the murder rates in ethnic inner city neighborhoods.

      Considering the Liberals/Progressives who generally vote Democrat, they may not be far off the mark. I suspect a large percentage of Dem constituents who are gun owners DGAF about gun laws anyway. They carry whether its “legal” or not and they will buy guns from the corner entrepreneur whether she succeeds in passing unconstitutional anti-gun legislation or not. Nothing changes for them regarding guns and they get even more government cash handouts from the Dems – win/win.

  11. I don’t see how that Pa. case is newsworthy here. The issue appealed was an alleged due process violation for the prosecutor’s failure to provide notice of a mandatory minimum sentence, something that is pretty well settled in Pa to not impact due process. The opinion addresses a waiver of that claim for really lousy appellate work by the lawyer (not that it would’ve been successful anyway).

    The lesson here, folks, really should be: hire a trial lawyer for your trial, and an appellate lawyer for your appeal.

    Edit: here’s the opinion (PDF) if you really want to bothered: http://www.pacourts.us/assets/opinions/Superior/out/J-S09013-16m%20-%201026351446910889.pdf

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