Opinion
BELLEVUE, WA – -(AmmoLand.com)- The Second Amendment Foundation today criticized the 4-3 split decision by the Connecticut state Supreme Court that reinstated a lawsuit against Remington Arms over how it marketed the Bushmaster rifle used in the tragic 2012 Sandy Hook school shooting.
“This ruling strains logic, if not common sense,” said SAF founder and Executive Vice President Alan M. Gottlieb. “The court dismissed the bulk of the lawsuit’s allegations but appears to have grasped at this single straw by deciding that the advertising is somehow at fault for what Adam Lanza did that day in December more than six years ago.
“This is like suing Ford or General Motors because a car they sold was stolen and used to run over a pedestrian all because the car manufacturers advertised that their car had better acceleration and performance than other vehicles,” he added.
Lanza, 20, first killed his mother and took her legally-purchased Bushmaster rifle to the school, where he murdered 20 youngsters and six adults. The lawsuit contends that Remington’s advertising was designed to glorify the Bushmaster rifle and enhance its appeal to younger consumers.
Justice Richard Palmer, writing for the majority, said that the “regulation of advertising that threatens the public’s health, safety, and morals has long been considered a core exercise of the state’s police powers.”
“That is absurd in this case,” Gottlieb observed. “Did the advertising even remotely suggest that the Bushmaster is best for murdering people? It appears to me like the court was looking for a way to squeak around the provisions of the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act that Congress passed in 2005. After all, the court dismissed most of the allegations but now has decided that advertising might be at fault. That’s a stretch of credulity worthy of surgical elastic.”
“There is no evidence the killer was driven by any advertising whatsoever,” he said. “This is an affront to the First Amendment as well as the Second. Even hinting that the killer was motivated in some way by an advertising message is so far out in the weeds that it may take a map for the court to find its way back.”
Second Amendment Foundation
The Second Amendment Foundation (www.saf.org) is the nation’s oldest and largest tax-exempt education, research, publishing and legal action group focusing on the Constitutional right and heritage to privately own and possess firearms. Founded in 1974, The Foundation has grown to more than 650,000 members and supporters and conducts many programs designed to better inform the public about the consequences of gun control.
The best defense is a good offense. Perhaps the SAF, NRA, and GOA could join forces and organize a massive class action lawsuit against the companies producing violent video games and violent, graphic action movies for their marketing of illegal acts that have caused gun restrictions to be implemented. Get the organization set up and sue the same perps every time a new gun restriction is passed based on an illegal use. Could be interesting…
Every time the demo/libs pull off what they think is a win l just buy more ammunition.
About 2/3rds of all gun deaths are suicides. A few % are accidental. Toss in the 8 -9 thousand thugs shooting each other and not much is left.
Drunk/impared drivers butcher and maim 10’s of thousands.
Nobody suing the beer companies.
Pulling heart strings.
With most news outlets demonizing Remington, expect a cascade effect with other firearms.
I’m not sure what twist of logic these Sandy Hook hoplophobes are using to claim advertising drove Adam Lanza to use a Bushmaster over any other brand/model. He did not purchase the Bushmaster rifle, his mother did. To get at it, he killed her first, and then stole it. That means at least two crimes committed in the acquiring of the murder weapon (he supposedly killed her with a different .22LR rifle). Of course, the liberal activist court went along with this warped line of reasoning. I believe it is going to be squashed at the federal level, since the… Read more »
Remember how they accused the cigarette industry of using “Joe Camel” to lure children to buy their product.
This is just the same application of a plot line. This application on and twisting of the 1st Amendment makes it dangerous taking it to the SCOTUS. After all, SCOTUS came down on the side of the anti-smoking Nazis in
an exact accusation style that was brought against Philip Morris.
Obvious plot to attack gun ownership and manufacturing…