A Canadian leftist writer for the New Yorker describes the lawsuit against gun makers, likening it to Martin Luther's 95 Theses, nailed to a church door.
The news that the parents of the children massacred two years ago in Sandy Hook, near Newtown, Connecticut, by a young man with a Bushmaster semi-automatic rifle, were undertaking a lawsuit against the gun manufacturer was at once encouraging and terribly discouraging. The encouraging part is that those parents, suffering from a grief that those of us who are only witnesses to it can barely begin to comprehend, haven’t, despite the failure to reinstate assault-weapons bans and stop the next massacre, given way to despair. Like Richard Martinez, after his son was murdered by a weapon that should never have been in the hands of a lunatic, or anyone else, for that matter, they’re allowing themselves to be angry, and then turning their anger into action: they’re naming the business that helped kill their children and asking a court to hold that business responsible. I don't see a tort, but then this is modern American jurisprudence, which uses conjured up theories such as "Emerging Awareness" to justify all manner of insanity. Frankly, using the legal system to redress the grievance of murder is insanity by definition.
The filed complaint—the numbered paragraphs give it an oddly religious feeling, like theses nailed to a church door—is worth reading in full, however painful that might be, not only because of the unbelievable suffering and cruelty it details on that terrible morning but also because it offers, in neatly logical fashion, an indisputable argument: the gun manufacturer is guilty of having sold a weapon whose only purpose was killing a lot of people in a very short time. Despite the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives having previously declared that such weapons “serve a function in crime and combat, but serve no sporting purpose,” Bushmaster sold it anyway—and precisely on the grounds that it could kill many people, quickly. “Forces of opposition bow down. You are single handedly outnumbered,” the advertising copy read. The rifle used in the Newtown massacre was sold to a woman who was murdered by the shooter. Unlikely Bushmaster sold it for that purpose, and it would be hard to prove even negligence on the part of the Bushmaster. Continued on Page 49
#1
These people think they have a moral right to infringe on Your rights.
The ultimate do-gooders are the ultimate intolerant goons that complicate life without your consent for their corrupt failed concepts.
Willfully ignorant and even more arrogant, they have no place running Civilized Society.
Ergo, they must destroy it.
#5
legislative prophylactics that prevent gunmakers, almost uniquely among American manufacturers, from ever being held responsible for the deaths that their products cause
Lie. Gun manufacturers don't benefirt from any special privilege. Electrical companies aren't held responsible for electrocutions: they delivered perfectly good electricity: customer carelessness or defective home installations aren't their responsibility. They are responsible if a defective power line they maintain causes a fire.
Car manufacturers are not held responsible for people overrun by cars. But GM or Ford (don(t remember) got a four billion fine for as a cost saving measure deliberately having designed a gas tank who punctured easily thus resulting into a number of cars catching fire after an accident and people getting killed.
And gun manufacturers get exactly the same treatment: they are held responsible for deaths caused by defective products like a gun exploding and killing its user, not through the normal use of the weapon.
Now let's talk about some people who should get multi-million dollar fines and even jail: like journalists, "intellectuals" and "community organizers" who dtir racial tensions and cause cops to be killed or shops set afire, who have forced an inocent persons (Zimmerman) to hide after falsely depeciting an accident as a racist crime, like falmsely accusing a group of people from rape. Let's begin by you Mr activist, when people are killed or raped because the good guys were unable to oppose the bad ones.
#6
Adam Gopnik completely ignores the moral argument, statistics or anecdotal information in favor of firearms. He must think his 1st Amendment right will be guaranteed by the good will and kindness of men.
#7
JFM, that was Ford with the Pinto runabout/sedan gas tank.
figures at the time showed a per unit savings of under $5.00 (IIRC) by not making the tank more crashworthy.
Tanks would rupture due to being impaled on a bolt in the rear-end housing area. Some reports said that simply turning the bolt around would have prevented many of the explosions.
#9
Hmmm??? And the people responsible for disarming civilians and creating "Gun Free" zones aren't responsible for the high number of deaths in those said zones? Interesting!
#10
Yes, AlmostAnonymous. I remind having heard of a shooting spree in a school stopped because a teacher confronted the attacker with his gun. Attacker immediately surrended. The cops came well later.
#17
I guess the summation of this article can be liberalism is a mental defect.
The FBI and CDC have concluded from multiple studies (that were funded to prove the opposite) that when more people are armed crime goes down. I am a Benefactor Life Member of the NRA. I am constantly asked by non-shooters for NRA stickers to put on their cars and home. Thousands of interviews with criminals in prison have proven when a criminal sees an NRA sticker or any other indication the occupant is armed they go somewhere else where the risk of being shot is lower.
Unsigned editorial in Shabelle News of all places...
Woe to anyone in Sweden who dissents from the orthodox view that welcoming large numbers of indigent peoples from such countries as Iraq, Syria, and Somalia is anything but a fine and noble idea. Even to argue that permitting about 1 percent of the existing population to emigrate annually from an alien civilization renders one politically, socially, and even legally beyond the pale. (I know a journalist threatened with arrest for mild dissent on this issue.) Stating that there exists a Swedish culture worth preserving meets with puzzlement.
And yet, the realities of immigration are apparent for all to see: welfare dependency, violent bigotry against Christians and Jews, and a wide range of social pathologies from unemployment to politically motivated rape. Accordingly, ever-increasing numbers of Swedes find themselves — despite known hazards — opting out of the consensus and worrying about their country’s cultural suicide.
The taboo on such attitudes means that political parties, with only one exception, staunchly support continued immigration. Only the Sweden Democrats (SD) offer an alternative: real efforts to integrate existing immigrants and a 90 percent decrease in future immigration. Despite an unsavory neo-fascist past (not something unique to it, by the way), SD has become increasingly respectable and has been rewarded with electoral success, doubling its parliamentary vote from 3 percent in 2006, to 6 percent in 2010, to 13 percent in 2014. All the Swedes with whom I spoke on a recent visit expect the SD vote to grow further, something recent polls confirm.
If a party or bloc of parties held a large majority in Sweden’s unicameral parliament, SD would be virtually irrelevant. But the Riksdag’s two blocs are almost equally balanced. Three left-wing parties control 159 of 349 seats, while the “right wing” (quotation marks to denote that, from an American perspective, it’s hardly conservative) Alliance for Sweden, consisting of four parties, has 141 seats. This means that SD, with 49 seats, holds the balance of power.
But SD is deemed anathema, so no party bargains with it to pass legislation, not even indirectly through the media. Both Left and “Right” seek to isolate and discredit it. Nevertheless, SD has played kingmaker on certain crucial legislation, particularly the annual budget. In keeping with its policy to drive from power every government that refuses to reduce immigration, it brought down an Alliance for Sweden government in early 2014. Recent weeks saw a repeat of this scenario, when SD joined the Alliance in opposing the leftist budget, forcing the government to call for elections in March 2015.
Posted by: Steve White ||
01/02/2015 00:00 ||
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#1
And yet, the realities of immigration are apparent for all to see: welfare dependency, violent bigotry against Christians and Jews, and a wide range of social pathologies from unemployment to politically motivated rape. Accordingly, ever-increasing numbers of Swedes find themselves — despite known hazards — opting out of the consensus and worrying about their country’s cultural suicide.
When the Swedes begin to rigorously endorse Affirmative Action and inclusion, so-called 'social pathologies' will be begin to be seen as normative. You can temporarily escape by moving away to the suburbs or sending your children to private schools, but the suicide of the host culture is the desired outcome of multi-culturalism.
#3
I guess the Swedes have not noticed their culture going to hell lately. Multicultural at work while completely ignoring that some cultures do not play well with other cultures.
#4
When did the tough Sweden of the past disappear?
I remember reading about the Swedish army being a major concern for the Russia of the Czars. Was it when they decided to appease the Germans and be neutral in WWII? Was it the neutrality/fear of Russia in WWI?
#5
Vikings conquered and settled in good chunks of Ireland, England, Normandy, Iceland, etc, leaving the less violent at home.
Vikings converted to Christianity around 1200 and lost the remains of that viking spirit. They might still have remained an awesome western military but pretty much the aggressiveness was bled out by then.
#7
Multiculturalism can work as long as ALL the cultures are reciprocal.
When tribals are imported (to presumably boost the rents establishment types exist on) it harms the country.
Much shortened Op-Ed piece.
You trudge into Gaza from a high-tech Israeli facility through a caged walkway that brings you, after about 15 minutes, to a ramshackle Palestinian border post; and then, formalities completed, on you go, through dust and the reek of sewage, past the crumpled buildings and the donkey carts, to arrive at last in the middle of nowhere.
Gaza is nowhere. Very few people go in or out of the 140-square-mile enclave. Most people want to forget about it. The border with Egypt was closed in October. A handful of travelers negotiate the labyrinth of inspections at the Israeli border and proceed into the Jewish state.
I watched a young man passing sand through a sieve as the surface of a road was laid beside the sea in Gaza City. He’d shake the sieve, watch the sand drop through and, finally, tip out the remnants. Again and again he did it, in the dust. He is among the more productively employed of Gaza’s 1.8 million citizens.
There is another war waiting to happen in Gaza. The last one changed nothing. Hamas rockets are being test-fired. Tensions simmer. The draft Security Council resolution at the United Nations, championed by the Palestinian leader, Mahmoud Abbas, seeking a withdrawal of Israeli forces from the West Bank by 2017, amounts to an elaborate sideshow. The real matter of diplomatic urgency going into 2015, for the Palestinian people and the world, is to end the lockdown of Gaza.
Nobody wants to talk about Gaza because it reeks of failure — the failure of Israeli withdrawal; the failure of a long-ago election that ushered Hamas to power; the failure to achieve the Palestinian unity necessary for serious peace talks; the failure to prevent repetitive war; the failure of the Arab Spring that led to that sealed Egyptian border; the failure to be coherent about Hamas (negotiated with by Israel to end the war and to secure the release of the Israeli soldier Gilad Shalit but otherwise viewed as a terrorist group with which negotiation is impossible); the failure to offer decency to 1.8 million trapped human beings.
The enclave is a thorny quandary. Hamas has a vile Charter, a goal of destroying Israel, and it fires rockets on Israeli civilians from among Palestinian civilians. But it is not monolithic. Putting Gaza first would have several merits: forcing Palestinians to unify their national movement and hold long-delayed elections; averting yet another war with its heavy toll in human life and negative impact on Israel’s international standing; ushering a large group of Palestinians out of radicalizing misery; obliging the peacemakers, so-called, to get real or go home; stopping the distraction at the United Nations.
Israelis, Palestinians, Egyptians, Europeans and Americans can — if they choose to locate the nowhere named Gaza and turn it into somewhere. The alternative is war without end.
You can lead a horse to water, but you can't make him drink, as the saying goes.
It only takes one party in that list of parties to ensure that Gaza remains nowhere. And Hamas is happy to be that one.
#2
Seems to me that it's the responsibility of the "trapped" to provide for themselves. Maybe if they stopped thinking those old Russian keys they're wearing were ever for a home in Israel... or gave up the "religion" that tells them killing Jews is a holy duty...
Posted by: Rob Crawford ||
01/02/2015 8:03 Comments ||
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#3
Not a failure... A choice. A choice the residents chose of their own free will.
Perhaps it's time to stop the rebuilding and the 'humanitarian relief' and simply let them have what they want.
#5
You give them prime, ocean front real estate and they turn it into a hell hole. It's like giving a brand new Mercedes Benz to a hopeless, homeless drunk.
#6
The solution for Gaza is:
step 1: arrange for an orderly termination of UNRWA.
step 2: arrange for an orderly removal of HAMAS and similar terrorists and their supporters (like the past removal of the PLO to Tunisia)
step 3: opening of the borders of Gaza, free elections, rebuilding,etc.
#8
While #6 sounds all reasoned and diplomatic and stuff, Ricardo's Theory of Comparative Advantage (basically, play to your strengths) says we go with Shipman's concept in #7 since the Paleos have pretty much cornered the market on the ME's version of low-rent, trailer park asshattery. Come on, kids. Let's put on a show!
A multi-volume chronology and reference guide set detailing three years of the Mexican Drug War between 2010 and 2012.
Rantburg.com and borderlandbeat.com correspondent and author Chris Covert presents his first non-fiction work detailing
the drug and gang related violence in Mexico.
Chris gives us Mexican press dispatches of drug and gang war violence
over three years, presented in a multi volume set intended to chronicle the death, violence and mayhem which has
dominated Mexico for six years.
Rantburg was assembled from recycled algorithms in the United States of America. No
trees were destroyed in the production of this weblog. We did hurt some, though. Sorry.
