Here’s a ray of light in a nation locked in darkness by the gun lobby and legislators in its thrall: The Supreme Court has given families of children slaughtered at Sandy Hook Elementary the right to pursue their case against a gun-maker in Connecticut court, an affirmation that federal law granting firearm manufacturers immunity does not trump a far more basic need to demand corporate accountability.
Last Tuesday, the nation’s highest court let stand a decision by Connecticut’s highest court, which in March said families could pursue their allegation gun-maker Remington violated state consumer protection laws, irresponsibly marketing weapons of mass murder to unstable young men.
There’s a powerful case to be made the company did exactly that when it manufactured guns capable of firing rounds with frightening speed and force and then promoted them using ads like the one that clearly resonated with Newtown mass murderer Adam Lanza.
“Consider your man card reissued,” it read.
Just because it’s legal, for now, in America, to make guns that can kill scores doesn’t mean they can be marketed with no legal restrictions.
That maxim finds its match in the fact two cretins who wrote the book “Nobody Died at Sandy Hook,” who accused a grieving father of faking his own son’s death certificate, were in October ordered to pay Leonard Pozner $450,000.
The First Amendment isn’t license to libel. The Second Amendment isn’t license to irresponsibly market weapons of war to young men primed to kill. To rephrase an old legal saw, the Constitution isn’t an assault rifle aimed at the nation’s heart.
— New York Daily News