It’s critical to correctly assign responsibility and accountability

Commentary by James Shott

In a matter of minutes on December 14, 2012, Adam Lanza killed 26 people – 20 of them school children – at the Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn. This horrific act was the work of a crazed 20 year-old. Lanza killed his mother, took her gun and headed off to Sandy Hook school. After killing 26 innocent people, he killed himself.

At the time, and still today, people blame the weapon Lanza’s mother had legally purchased instead of the mentally ill shooter, or his mother who ignored years of warnings about his psychiatric anxiety and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

The school system also ignored signs of mental problems, according to The New York Times, which reported on findings that resulted from a mandate for the Connecticut Office of the Child Advocate to “conduct investigations of child fatalities and issue public reports with the particular focus on preventing future child deaths.”

The Times noted “the report faulted the school system for not doing a better job of monitoring Mr. Lanza’s progress, educationally and emotionally, each time he was allowed to receive his education in a ‘homebound’ environment because of difficulties he had in social settings.”

But those who had the responsibility to act to protect the public from this dangerously mentally ill person – Lanza’s now-dead mother and the school system – are not the targets of a wrongful-death lawsuit. Instead the plaintiffs have targeted the manufacturer, the distributer and the seller of the legal weapon the mentally ill Lanza used to kill and injure.

The plaintiffs whose lawsuit targets these businesses are the families of nine of the victims and one survivor of the Sandy Hook attack, who understandably are still desperately trying to cope with having their world turned upside-down. A lawsuit filed on their behalf asserts that the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle Lanza used, described as “military style” in The Times story, should have never been available for purchase by civilians.

A motion to dismiss the lawsuit against the companies involved in the manufacturing, distribution and sale of the rifle was denied by Connecticut Superior Court Judge Barbara Bellis, who rejected the gun companies' position that gun businesses are protected from civil lawsuits by a 2005 federal law that protects against lawsuits for criminal acts committed with their products.

The case against the manufacturer of the rifle, Remington Arms Co., firearms distributor Camfour Inc., and the now-defunct Riverview Gun Sales in East Windsor, Conn., that sold Lanza's mother the rifle two years prior to the Sandy Hook shooting, will go forward with a court session scheduled for this week.

The Wall Street Journal reported that “[a]ttorneys for the family are pursuing a claim under an exception of the federal law known as a negligent-entrustment claim. Under such a claim, a seller can be held liable for supplying a product to a person it reasonably could have known posed a risk to themselves or others.”

This situation raises several questions, among which is how could the manufacturer, the distributer, or the seller know that a mentally ill relative of a potential purchaser would take it from the owner and use it to commit a criminal act?

Another question: If Lanza had used a .38 revolver or 12-guage shotgun, guns that are clearly not designed for military use, would the plaintiffs have brought the case, and if so, would the judge have denied the challenge and allowed the case to go forward?

Like a handgun or a shotgun, the AR-15 is not restricted for sale to the public by law. So it is merely the opinion of the plaintiffs that it should not be available for purchase by the public.

If instead of using a gun Lanza had driven a vehicle into a group of children waiting for a school bus, would the plaintiffs have sued the vehicle manufacturer and the car dealer? What if he had used a knife, or a bomb in a pressure cooker or a soft-drink can? Would there be any legal action?

If this lawsuit ends with one or more of the defendants being found liable, the door will be opened for dozens or hundreds of similar legal actions targeting not the perpetrator of a crime, but manufactures, distributors, or sellers being held responsible for criminal activity they had nothing to do with. If manufacturers can be held liable for deaths or injuries resulting from the criminal misuse of their legal, non-defective products, how many businesses or entrepreneurs will want to take the risk to make and sell something?

It is a nearly automatic response to have great sympathy for the families of those murdered children and the survivors of Sandy Hook. But sympathy, however great, and the circumstances of the event, however horrible, are not compelling reasons to punish legal businesses for making and selling legal products that were deliberately misused by someone with diagnosed mental health issues, and in this case someone other than the owner of the legal product.

Solving these kinds of problems requires focusing on the actual causes, not in shifting the responsibility to uninvolved third parties. Adam Lanza, his mother and the school system bear sole responsibility for this tragedy.

Cross-posted from Observations

Commentary by James Shott

The United States is a wonderful country that provides many opportunities for all. However, the U.S. is short of perfect in many ways, including unwise policies that put Americans at risk. Places like schools, shopping areas, restaurants and bars, office buildings and, of all places, military installations, leave their occupants at risk by announcing to everyone, including murderers and terrorists, that guns are not allowed on the premises.

Those in charge of these facilities obviously want the people who spend time in them to be safe, and so they ban guns from them. If only the murderers and terrorists obeyed the rules. But, alas, they don’t.

And so yet again newspapers, broadcasts and Internet sites are filled with the horrific story of multiple deaths and injuries at gun-free zones, this last episode at two military facilities in Chattanooga, Tenn. last week.

“A 24-year-old Kuwaiti-born gunman opened fire on a military recruiting station on Thursday, then raced to a second military site where he killed four United States Marines,” as reported by The New York Times. A Navy petty officer shot on Thursday died Saturday. The nation has logged yet another event where American military personnel – at the mercy of short-sighted rules based upon emotion and fear, rather than on logic – were forced to be sitting ducks while on duty defending the nation against its enemies. Except, in this case they were prohibited from protecting themselves against this enemy.

After the numerous examples of violence on military bases – the worst of which was the massacre at Ft. Hood, Texas on Nov. 5, 2009, when Army Maj. Nidal Hasan killed 13 people and wounded more than 30 others at the clinic where he worked as a physician – one might think that the President of the United States, the Commander-in-Chief of the nation’s military, might change the rules that prohibit military personnel, arguably those best trained to carry weapons anywhere and everywhere, from being armed while on duty (this is a non sequitur!).

It defies reason to deny highly trained military personnel being armed while serving at their duty stations, making them sitting ducks, but it also makes little sense to deny having trained people at schools and other places who could respond to an armed attacker that otherwise would enjoy open season on those at defenseless facilities.

Just the idea that there may be armed people at a potential target has a deterrent effect on those wishing to commit murder and mayhem. Terrorists and murderers may be vicious scum, but they are not always stupid. They prefer soft targets, where they can accomplish their evil goals without interference, and knowing that guns are prohibited at a potential target location is an attractive advantage, as opposed to a target where they know they likely will encounter armed resistance.

John R. Lott, Jr. is an economist, columnist and author of books on guns and crime. He notes in discussing a live-fire incident: “And even when concealed handgun permit holders don’t deter the killers, the permit holders stop them. Just a couple of weeks ago, a mass public shooting at a liquor store in Conyers, Ga., was stopped by a concealed handgun permit holder. A couple of people had already been killed by the time the permit holder arrived, but according to Rockdale County Sheriff Eric Levett: ‘I believe that if [the legal permit holder] did not return fire at the suspect, then more of those customers would have [been] hit by a gun. It didn’t appear that he cared who he shot or where he was shooting until someone was shooting back at him. So, in my opinion, he saved other lives in that store."

So, what are the chances that the “gun-free zone” policy at least contributed to the deaths of five military personnel in Chattanooga? Very good, if not certain.

This policy was put into effect by President Bill Clinton, according to a 2009 editorial in The Washington Times, following the Ft. Hood massacre: “Among President Clinton’s first acts upon taking office in 1993 was to disarm U.S. soldiers on military bases.” The editorial then added, “Because of Mr. Clinton, terrorists would face more return fire if they attacked a Texas Wal-Mart than the gunman faced at Fort Hood …” That restriction was not altered by President George W. Bush, although there was only one shooting on military bases during Mr. Bush’s presidency, according to a report on nbcwashington.com, and that was in September 2008, three months before Mr. Bush’s tenure as president ended.

The report lists three shootings during Mr. Clinton’s term in the White House, but that number increased substantially during Barack Obama’s tenure. The report lists 16 shootings from January 2009 when Mr. Obama took office through April of 2014. But even that shocking statistic has not prompted him to change the rules.

A major enumerated function of the federal government is to guarantee our God given rights, several (but not all) of which are listed in the Bill of Rights. Who can argue that protecting one’s self is not such a right? When is the government going to stop interfering with that right?

Cross-posted from Observations