Brady Campaign To Nickel And Dime Gun Stores To Death
BY Herschel Smith
10 years, 2 months ago
Literally, if they have their way.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence and the widow of a slain Plymouth Township police officer filed a lawsuit Monday against the West Norriton gun store that sold guns to a straw purchaser.
The suit alleges gross negligence by In Site Firearms for selling six guns in a three-month period to a man they should have identified as a straw purchaser. One of those guns was used to kill Officer Brad Fox in September 2012.
According to the suit, In Site ignored several red flags about Michael Henry, including that he was a drug addict who had already purchased several of the same type of gun. Henry always paid in cash and transferred the guns to Andrew Thomas, a convicted felon barred from having firearms, in the gun store’s parking lot, according to the suit.
As if the gun store owner has omniscience. This is part of a larger strategy with Bloomberg’s money.
The Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence, joined by community leaders, Friday launched a national initiative utilizing protests, petitions, a code of conduct and lawsuits to “Stop Bad Apple Gun Dealers” that turn a blind eye to gun traffickers, straw purchasers and criminals, and flood our nation’s streets with guns used in crimes. An astonishing 60 percent of crime guns come from just one percent of gun dealers.
“These ‘bad apple’ gun dealers choose profits over people and are largely responsible for America’s gun violence problem,” said Dan Gross, president of the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence. “We are working to mobilize communities directly impacted every day by the guns these bad apple dealers put on their streets to demand change. We are all fed up with the violence in our communities and this is something that we can all do to make a real difference – to keep guns out of the hands of criminals and to keep our children safe.”
The campaign kicked-off outside Chuck’s Gun Shop & Pistol Range in Riverdale, Illinois, which has been the source of thousands of guns recovered in crimes in Chicago. Chuck’s alone accounts for eight percent of the total number of guns that were recovered and traced to crimes in Chicago in the last five years.
I suspect that this strategy will succeed in certain locations where the judges are progressive and the juries stupid, but will fail overall in the Southern and Midwestern states.
Some gun shops may be shut down, but in the end it will be a tremendous waste of money and legal time. What some readers can learn from this is that while you cannot control the judges – most of the time – you need to be aware of the makeup of juries.
If a “jury of your peers” is the kind that would hold a gun dealer accountable for omniscience, you might want to consider moving elsewhere, just like the gun manufacturers have.
More at War on Guns.
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On September 9, 2014 at 12:22 pm, Archer said:
“The campaign kicked-off outside Chuck’s Gun Shop & Pistol Range in Riverdale, Illinois, which has been the source of thousands of guns recovered in crimes in Chicago. Chuck’s alone accounts for eight percent of the total number of guns that were recovered and traced to crimes in Chicago in the last five years.“
Boy, that bolded sentence sounds bad, doesn’t it?
However, it’s not the whole story. Due to zoning regulations that Chicago and Cook County have put in place, just how many gun stores are there in/near Chicago and Cook County? Perhaps someone from that area can weigh in, but I’d wager the answer is, “Not as many per square mile as you’d find anywhere else in the country.”
Therefore, it’d be a normal consequence that any given gun store — Chuck’s included — in/near Chicage/Cook-County is “responsible” for a larger percentage of “locally-sourced crime guns” than a similar store in another area.
As to the straw purchaser, buying guns in cash and getting the same kind of gun repeatedly: Paying in cash is normal, and sometimes necessary (“Operation Choke Point”, and all). Maybe he’s a straw purchaser, maybe he runs a small armed security outfit (big enough to need multiple pistols, but too small for a corporate contract), maybe he’s just a [Glock/S&W/1911/whatever] fanboi — it’s unreasonable to assume the dealer can tell the difference and demand he/she refuse legitimate purchases on the mere possibility it’s a bad deal. That possibility exists on every sale; the logical end is that the dealer puts him/her self out of business by refusing all customers.
On September 9, 2014 at 9:48 pm, Rob Crawford said:
ISTR the ATF was caught running a fast-and-furious style operation using Indianapolis gun stores, ordering the dealers to go through with sales they didn’t want to. The ATF asked about the “questionable” sales, but backed off when it was pointed out they ordered them to go through.
You want to find where criminals in Chicago get guns, look to other criminals — how many of the “crime guns” traced to Chucks were stolen from law-abiding owners. And look to the ATF.
On September 12, 2014 at 10:48 am, robertsgunshop said:
As a FFL holder, this scares the living shit out of me. Now, on top of every thing else I have to do, I now have to be a mind reader. Being a one man operation, one lawsuit would be the end.