Harry Tuttle
Member
- Joined
- Nov 14, 2003
- Messages
- 3,093
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence Asks: When Will Sen. Craig StartTelling the Truth about The NRA's Gun Immunity Bill?
To: National Desk, Congressional Reporter
Contact: Peter Hamm of The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 202-898-0792
WASHINGTON, July 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence:
Senator Larry Craig, the National Rifle Association board member who is the chief sponsor of the bill to grant sweeping civil immunity to gun sellers, said repeatedly this morning that the legislation allows negligence cases against gun sellers to proceed. That is untrue, and the Senator knows it.
The exceptions to immunity in the bill include cases involving "negligent entrustment" and "negligence per," extremely narrow and technical legal doctrines that have no application to the vast majority of cases where gun sellers have enabled criminal to get guns.
"Senator Craig says 'read the bill,'" said Michael D. Barnes, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "He will regret giving that advice. No Senator who actually reads this dreadful special interest bill could possibly defend voting for it. It is clear that the bill's supporters have read nothing but the gun lobby's talking points."
"If Senator Craig is telling the truth, he should allow the bill to be amended right now to allow negligence cases. It would take five minutes to draft the appropriate language," Barnes said. "He won't agree. He wants to bar negligence cases against reckless gun sellers, and the NRA wrote the bill for him to do just that."
During the Senate Floor debate on the bill in the last Congress, Senator Craig and other immunity proponents actually opposed and defeated an amendment offered by Senator Levin (D-Mich.) that would have at least allowed cases against gun sellers shown to have engaged in "grossly negligent or reckless" conduct.
Under current law, a gun seller can be held civilly liable if it engages in negligent conduct that causes harm. For example, in a lawsuit filed by victims of the Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks, the sniper victims sought to hold gun dealer Bull's Eye Shooter Supply of Tacoma, Washington, liable for allowing the snipers to obtain a Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic assault rifle. Bull's Eye had such shoddy security that Lee Malvo, the 17-year-old sniper, was apparently able to walk into the gun dealer's shop and walk out with the three-foot-long assault rifle, even though he was prohibited from buying a gun. The sniper's weapon was one of more than 230 guns that "disappeared" from the dealer in three years, and dozens of its guns were traced to crime. A Washington State court found that Bull's Eye's conduct could be found at trial to be negligent, and allowed the suit. Bull's Eye later settled the case for $2 million. The immunity bill would have barred this suit because it bans suits based on gun dealer negligence. As the late Lloyd Cutler, former White House Counsel, concluded, after conducting his own independent analysis, the bill's narrow exceptions for "negligent entrustment" and "negligence per se" would not have preserved the victims' case if the immunity bill had become law.
Seventy-five law professors have written to Congress opposing the bill because the exception to immunity are so narrow that the bill "would largely immunize those in the firearms industry from liability for negligence." "No other industry," the professors wrote, "enjoys or has ever enjoyed such a blanket freedom from responsibility for the foreseeable and preventable consequences of negligent conduct."
http://www.usnewswire.com/
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto..._the_truth_about_the_nra_s_gun_immunity_bill_
To: National Desk, Congressional Reporter
Contact: Peter Hamm of The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, 202-898-0792
WASHINGTON, July 27 /U.S. Newswire/ -- The following was released today by the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence:
Senator Larry Craig, the National Rifle Association board member who is the chief sponsor of the bill to grant sweeping civil immunity to gun sellers, said repeatedly this morning that the legislation allows negligence cases against gun sellers to proceed. That is untrue, and the Senator knows it.
The exceptions to immunity in the bill include cases involving "negligent entrustment" and "negligence per," extremely narrow and technical legal doctrines that have no application to the vast majority of cases where gun sellers have enabled criminal to get guns.
"Senator Craig says 'read the bill,'" said Michael D. Barnes, President of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. "He will regret giving that advice. No Senator who actually reads this dreadful special interest bill could possibly defend voting for it. It is clear that the bill's supporters have read nothing but the gun lobby's talking points."
"If Senator Craig is telling the truth, he should allow the bill to be amended right now to allow negligence cases. It would take five minutes to draft the appropriate language," Barnes said. "He won't agree. He wants to bar negligence cases against reckless gun sellers, and the NRA wrote the bill for him to do just that."
During the Senate Floor debate on the bill in the last Congress, Senator Craig and other immunity proponents actually opposed and defeated an amendment offered by Senator Levin (D-Mich.) that would have at least allowed cases against gun sellers shown to have engaged in "grossly negligent or reckless" conduct.
Under current law, a gun seller can be held civilly liable if it engages in negligent conduct that causes harm. For example, in a lawsuit filed by victims of the Washington, D.C.-area sniper attacks, the sniper victims sought to hold gun dealer Bull's Eye Shooter Supply of Tacoma, Washington, liable for allowing the snipers to obtain a Bushmaster XM-15 semiautomatic assault rifle. Bull's Eye had such shoddy security that Lee Malvo, the 17-year-old sniper, was apparently able to walk into the gun dealer's shop and walk out with the three-foot-long assault rifle, even though he was prohibited from buying a gun. The sniper's weapon was one of more than 230 guns that "disappeared" from the dealer in three years, and dozens of its guns were traced to crime. A Washington State court found that Bull's Eye's conduct could be found at trial to be negligent, and allowed the suit. Bull's Eye later settled the case for $2 million. The immunity bill would have barred this suit because it bans suits based on gun dealer negligence. As the late Lloyd Cutler, former White House Counsel, concluded, after conducting his own independent analysis, the bill's narrow exceptions for "negligent entrustment" and "negligence per se" would not have preserved the victims' case if the immunity bill had become law.
Seventy-five law professors have written to Congress opposing the bill because the exception to immunity are so narrow that the bill "would largely immunize those in the firearms industry from liability for negligence." "No other industry," the professors wrote, "enjoys or has ever enjoyed such a blanket freedom from responsibility for the foreseeable and preventable consequences of negligent conduct."
http://www.usnewswire.com/
http://news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=sto..._the_truth_about_the_nra_s_gun_immunity_bill_
