Shocking!! City of Gary, IN wastes taxpayer money

This bit of idiocy appeared in Ft. Wayne Daily Fish Wrap on 22 Jan.:

Though state and federal laws have – unwisely, in our opinion – given gun makers and dealers broad protections from lawsuits, the Indiana Supreme Court has kept alive a suit from the city of Gary.

Gary accuses several local dealers and gun makers – including Smith & Wesson, Colt and Beretta – of violating state public nuisance laws in selling guns, particularly for making “straw purchases,” selling a gun to a buyer knowing it was intended for someone else.

As the Supreme Court noted in an earlier ruling, Gary police used a sting operation. “An undercover officer first told a dealer’s salesperson that he could not lawfully purchase a gun, for example, because he had no license or had been convicted of a felony, and a second undercover officer then made a purchase with the clerk’s knowledge that the gun would be given to the first.”

Gary, the court noted, alleges “the manufacturers know of these illegal retail sales of handguns” and also asserts that “the manufacturers and distributors have the ability to change the distribution system to prevent these unlawful sales but have intentionally failed to do so.”

Laws granting the gun industry immunity from lawsuits specifically exclude “an action in which a manufacturer or seller of a qualified product knowingly violated a State or Federal statute applicable to the sale.”

Gary still faces stiff hurdles, including a possible U.S. Supreme Court challenge and the cost of pursuing the lawsuit. But seeking a court judgment on whether dealers and makers broke state laws and are therefore liable is worthy of pursuing by a city that continually has one of the highest homicide rates in the nation.


Lex tilted at the JG editorial staff one more time:

As hard as it is, I now have even less respect for the editors at the JG than when the day began based on the idiocy of this morning’s “Why Gary can keep pursuing lawsuit against gun makers.” It seems to me that you are willing to sacrifice your personal and journalistic integrity to advance a political agenda here.

Straw buyers? I’m shocked! Manufacturers know that these straw sales are taking place!? Get a clue, EVERYONE knows these sales are taking place. And here’s another shocker that probably never crossed your collective closed minds, straw buyers buy alcohol, medicine, cigarettes, houses, cars, clothes, boats - well maybe someone there has cracked the code. There are straw buyers who buy nearly every product produced and turn it over to a third party who then uses it for some illegal or immoral purpose.

So by your absurd logic, Budweiser should be held responsible and sued when some dope buys a 20 year old a case of beer and that 20 year old wrecks his car killing a mother of four in the process.

The president has called for a new era of responsibility. How about we start advocating that the people who commit actual gun crimes start being held responsible. Commit a crime with a gun, go to jail for 10 years every time, no exceptions. Unless of course you are Tim Geithner and just forgot.