Octopus Overlords

Connecticut’s Supreme Court ruled Thursday that the manufacturer of the Bushmaster AR-15 rifle can be sued and potentially held liable in connection with the 2012 mass murder at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown, Conn.

The groundbreaking decision overturned a lower-court ruling barring the lawsuit, which was brought by the estates of nine victims killed by Adam Lanza, who was armed with the high-powered rifle during his assault on the school. Bushmaster is owned by Remington.

The families argued, among other things, that the rifle’s manufacturer and distributor negligently allowed and encouraged civilians to use a weapon suitable only for military and law enforcement use.

The firearms company had convinced a lower court that a federal law enacted in 2005 limited the liability of firearms manufacturers and dealers, essentially preempting wrongful death suits in state and federal courts.

The Connecticut high court disagreed. It also said the suit, which seeks unspecified damages for each death, could go forward under that state’s Unfair Trade Practices Law.

a weapon suitable only for military and law enforcement use.

Connecticut law, the court wrote in the majority opinion, "does not permit advertisements that promote or encourage violent, criminal behavior." While federal law does offer protection for gun manufacturers, the majority wrote, "Congress did not intend to immunize firearms suppliers who engage in truly unethical and irresponsible marketing practices promoting criminal conduct, and given that statutes such as CUTPA are the only means available to address those types of wrongs, it falls to a jury to decide whether the promotional schemes alleged in the present case rise to the level of illegal trade practices and whether fault for the tragedy can be laid at their feet."

The Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School community is mourning another loss. Sydney Aiello was a recent MSD graduate who was close friends with Meadow Pollack, one of the victims of the Parkland shooting.

Aiello’s mother said her daughter took her own life last weekend.

...

Aiello was described as a vibrant young woman who was focused on her grades and a joy to be around. Cara Aiello said her daughter was on campus the day of the shooting but not in Freshman Building. She said Sydney struggled with survivor’s guilt and was recently diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder. Cara said Sydney struggled to attend college classes because she was afraid of being in a classroom and was often sad recently but never asked for help before she killed herself.

Cara hopes Sydney’s story can help save others.

Ryan Petty’s daughter, Alaina, died in the MSD shooting. He’s focused a lot of effort on suicide prevention since the Parkland tragedy, worried that traumatized teens might take their own lives.

More children were shot dead in 2017 than on-duty police officers and active duty military

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“It is sobering that in 2017, there were 144 police officers who died in the line of duty and about 1,000 active duty military throughout the world who died, whereas 2,462 school-age children were killed by firearms," the authors wrote of their findings based on children in the U.S.

The team at Florida Atlantic University's Schmidt College of Medicine assessed the most recent data collected by the National Center for Health Statistics and found that 38,940 children aged between 5 to 18 years old died in circumstances involving a firearm between 1999 and 2017.

Some 6,464 deaths involved children between 5 to 14 years of age, amounting to 340 deaths annually on average. A further 32,478 children between 15 to 18 years old died, or 2,050 per year on average between 1999 and 2017.

Of these children, 61 percent were killed in an assault involving a firearm, while 32 percent died by suicide. A further 5 percent died in an accident. The death was undetermined in 2 percent of cases.

“It is important to note that firearm injuries and especially deaths are typically not isolated events,” said Alex Piquero, a criminology researcher at the University of Texas at Dallas who wasn’t involved in the study [a different one than the one above but similar, for previous years].

“They often tend to co-occur with other crimes, whether gang-related, drug involved or other serious criminal activities, and for many of these crimes boys tend to be overrepresented compared to girls,”

Until Heller, the invalidity of Second Amendment–based objections to firearms regulations had been uncontroversial. The first two federal laws directly restricting the civilian use and possession of firearms—the 1927 act prohibiting mail delivery of handguns and the 1934 act prohibiting the possession of sawed-off shotguns and machine guns—were enacted over minor Second Amendment objections that were dismissed by the vast majority of legislators participating in the debates. After reviewing many of the same sources that are discussed at greater length by Scalia in his majority opinion in Heller, the Miller Court unanimously concluded that the Second Amendment did not apply to the possession of a firearm that did not have “some relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.” And in 1980, in a footnote to an opinion upholding a conviction for receipt of a firearm, the Court effectively affirmed Miller, writing: “[T]he Second Amendment guarantees no right to keep and bear a firearm that does not have ‘some reasonable relationship to the preservation or efficiency of a well regulated militia.’”

So well settled was the issue that, speaking on the PBS NewsHour in 1991, the retired Chief Justice Warren Burger described the National Rifle Association’s lobbying in support of an expansive interpretation of the Second Amendment in these terms: “One of the greatest pieces of fraud, I repeat the word fraud, on the American public by special-interest groups that I have ever seen in my lifetime.”

Even if the lobbyists who oppose gun-control regulation actually do endorse the dubious proposition that the Second Amendment was intended to limit the federal power to regulate the civilian use of handguns—that Burger incorrectly accused them of “fraud”—I find it incredible that policy makers in a democratic society have failed to impose more effective regulations on the ownership and use of firearms than they have.

And even if there were some merit to the legal arguments advanced in the Heller case, all could foresee the negative consequences of the decision, which should have provided my colleagues with the justification needed to apply stare decisis to Miller. At a minimum, it should have given them greater pause before announcing such a radical change in the law that would greatly tie the hands of state and national lawmakers endeavoring to find solutions to the gun problem in America. Their twin failure—first, the misreading of the intended meaning of the Second Amendment, and second, the failure to respect settled precedent—represents the worst self-inflicted wound in the Court’s history.

On its website, Salesforce.com touts retailer Camping World as a leading customer of its business software, highlighting its use of products to help sales staff move product. A Camping World executive is even quoted calling Salesforce’s software “magic.”

But behind the scenes in recent weeks, the Silicon Valley tech giant has delivered a different message to gun-selling retailers such as Camping World: Stop selling military-style rifles, or stop using our software.

The pressure Salesforce is exerting on those retailers — barring them from using its technology to market products, manage customer service operations and fulfill orders — puts them in a difficult position. Camping World, for example, spends more than $1 million a year on Salesforce’s e-commerce software, according to one analyst estimate. Switching to another provider now could cost the company double that to migrate data, reconfigure systems and retrain employees.

The change in Salesforce’s acceptable-use policy shows how a technology giant that is mostly unknown to the public is trying to influence what retailers in America sell and alter the dynamics of a charged social issue. While Salesforce is hardly a household name, it is a dominant provider of software and services that help businesses manage their customers. With roughly 40,000 employees and a market value of nearly $120 billion, it has become a behemoth in San Francisco. Its branded skyscraper also towers over the city as the tallest building and a major landmark.

But its decision to force its position on guns on retailers did not sit well with some industry advocates. These types of rules are “corporate-policy virtue signaling” and discriminate against gun owners, whose rights are protected by the Second Amendment, said Mark Oliva, public affairs director of the National Shooting Sports Foundation, a firearms trade group.

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 4:09 pm The company that services the fire extinguishers at your local Walmart isn't trying to tell them that they can't sell Heinz products.

GreenGoo wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 5:11 pm

Isgrimnur wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 4:09 pm The company that services the fire extinguishers at your local Walmart isn't trying to tell them that they can't sell Heinz products.

Maybe they should.

Jaymon wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 5:21 pm its a very weird and possibly unpredicted future. Corporations are working towards gun safety while the government won't. I don't think William Gibson ever could have predicted that.

its also a very weird legal stance. Salesforce is trying to enforce policy on its customers to not sell certain products, but none of those product are illegal. And it doesn't come under the "refuse to do business with some customers" because they still want some of those customers business.
I think a legal challenge against this policy would succeed, that sounds like discrimination. What if mcDonalds said "its ok to buy our food via drive thru, but you are not allowed to then give it to people in green shirts"

On the other hand, if there is a legal challenge, salesforce might make a big deal out of it, which could harm the client companies image. image this news story
Salesforce - camping world sued us so they can keep using our software to sell GUNS THAT KILL KIDS

Jaymon wrote: ↑Thu May 30, 2019 5:21 pm its a very weird and possibly unpredicted future. Corporations are working towards gun safety while the government won't. I don't think William Gibson ever could have predicted that.

its also a very weird legal stance. Salesforce is trying to enforce policy on its customers to not sell certain products, but none of those product are illegal. And it doesn't come under the "refuse to do business with some customers" because they still want some of those customers business.
I think a legal challenge against this policy would succeed, that sounds like discrimination. What if mcDonalds said "its ok to buy our food via drive thru, but you are not allowed to then give it to people in green shirts"

On the other hand, if there is a legal challenge, salesforce might make a big deal out of it, which could harm the client companies image. image this news story
Salesforce - camping world sued us so they can keep using our software to sell GUNS THAT KILL KIDS

The change affects “a small number of existing customers when their current contracts expire,” as well as all new customers, Salesforce spokeswoman Gina Sheibley said.

The Supreme Court on Monday left intact a federal law that requires the registration of some firearms, including silencers, and turned away a request to consider whether such firearm accessories are protected by the Second Amendment.

An appeals court had held that a silencer is not a "bearable" arm protected by the Constitution.
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The order was issued without comment or recorded dissent.

Shane Cox owned an army surplus store in Kansas where he sold unregistered homemade silencers and Jeremy Kettler bought one of them. They were convicted under the National Firearms Act, passed in 1934, which requires individuals to register silencers and to pay a federal tax of about $200. The law has the effect of limiting the number of silencers, but not banning them. It also makes it harder to transfer them.

Eight states and Washington, DC, go further and ban silencers altogether, others ban them unless registered with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms.

US gun manufacturer Colt has said it will suspend the production of sporting rifles for consumers.

Those include the AR-15, a semi-automatic rifle that has been used in several recent US mass shootings.

Colt says it remains committed to the right to bear arms, but that the US market is already saturated with similar weapons.

It will focus instead on fulfilling contracts for customers in the military and police, it added.

Colt's decision is unlikely to make it more difficult for people to get hold of semi-automatic weapons, as many other manufacturers make similar rifles, observers say.

"The fact of the matter is that over the last few years, the market for modern sporting rifles has experienced significant excess manufacturing capacity," Colt's chief executive officer, Dennis Veilleux, said in a written statement.

"Given this level of manufacturing capacity, we believe there is adequate supply for modern sporting rifles for the foreseeable future."

The Supreme Court said Tuesday that it will not hear a closely watched case against gunmaker Remington, a move the company has warned could potentially increase the liability of firearm manufacturers to suits brought by victims of gun crimes.

The court’s action will allow the family members of children killed in the 2012 Sandy Hook Elementary school massacre to move forward with their lawsuit.
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They claim that Remington marketed the weapon “as a highly lethal weapon designed for purposes that are illegal — namely, killing other human beings.”

The Connecticut Supreme Court ruled in a divided opinion earlier this year that the family members could pursue their lawsuit, rejecting Remington’s argument. The court wrote that the family members are “entitled to have the opportunity to prove their wrongful marketing allegations.”

The Supreme Court’s move will allow the lower court’s decision to stand, potentially opening the door to more lawsuits from victims of gun crime.

Posts that a Mercer County man made on Facebook were so concerning that authorities have temporarily seized his firearms, and jailed him on a felony terroristic threats charge, police said.

Hasheem Williams, 27, of Princeton, was arrested Friday in an early usage of a state “red flag” law allowing cops to seize a person’s firearms if they pose "a significant danger of causing bodily injury.”

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To seize a suspect’s firearms, law enforcement, relatives or roommates must demonstrate to a state Superior Court judge that they believe a person presents “an immediate and present danger to others.”

Smoove_B wrote: ↑Tue Nov 12, 2019 12:04 pm Obama NJ is coming for your guns:

Posts that a Mercer County man made on Facebook were so concerning that authorities have temporarily seized his firearms, and jailed him on a felony terroristic threats charge, police said.

Hasheem Williams, 27, of Princeton, was arrested Friday in an early usage of a state “red flag” law allowing cops to seize a person’s firearms if they pose "a significant danger of causing bodily injury.”

...

To seize a suspect’s firearms, law enforcement, relatives or roommates must demonstrate to a state Superior Court judge that they believe a person presents “an immediate and present danger to others.”

I probably don't visit the right circles, but I'm surprised this isn't making more national news.

wonderpug wrote: ↑Fri Oct 06, 2017 11:30 am [*]varmint control - probably don't need semi-auto rifles for minor critters, but for feral hogs or something that could attack you, I could see an argument for semi-auto rifles being better to have[/list]

I'm not saying all these reasons are my own, but those are the most common 'societal benefit' reasons I could think of that come up.

A Texas woman was found dead after pre-dawn attack by a group of feral hogs outside a home, the Chambers County sheriff said.

Christine Rollins, a 59-year old caregiver to an elderly couple in Anahuac, failed to show up at her normal time on Sunday, the sheriff's office said. The 84-year-old homeowner found her lying in the front yard between her car and the house.

Sheriff Brian Hawthorne said in a news conference Monday that "multiple hogs" assaulted Rollins when she arrived at work, likely between 6 and 6:30 a.m., when it was still dark outside.

"In my 35 years, I will tell you it's one of the worst things I've ever seen," Hawthorne told reporters.

Jefferson County Medical Examiner Selly Rivers determined Rollins was attacked by different hogs because of the various size of the bites on her body, Hawthorne said.

A second New Jersey municipality is declaring its opposition to gun control, including a new state law that allows for removing weapons from someone judged a threat to themselves or others.

The Sussex Borough council voted 5-0 on Tuesday to adopt a resolution in support of becoming a “Second Amendment/lawful gun owner municipality," two weeks after a similar resolution was approved without opposition in West Milford.

The New Jersey law allows for a judge - in response to a request from family or household members, or law enforcement - to order the removal of guns and ammunition from someone who “poses a significant danger of bodily injury to self or others,” as described in the statute.

The legislation received crossover support from many Republicans, passing the Senate by 32-5 and Assembly by 59-12.

Christian Heyne, vice president of policy at Brady — formerly the Brady Campaign to Prevent Gun Violence — criticized the Sussex Borough resolution and defended red flag laws as “a tool used by law enforcement to ensure that individuals who are most at risk to hurt themselves are not able to.”

Unagi wrote: ↑Tue Dec 24, 2019 2:06 pm I was wrong to say that it's always family that uses this, as apparently police themselves can get a red-flag thrown.... But, it's all done before a judge - so the 'he said / she said' nature of it is being reviewed (in theory) by someone in a position to judge these things on some level...

The FBI on Thursday arrested three suspected neo-Nazis who had planned to travel with firearms to Richmond, Va., to participate in a protest against gun control measures proposed by the state legislature’s newly-seated Democratic majority.

Federal officials took the three men into custody in connection with a probe into the white supremacist group The Base, charging them with several federal crimes in Maryland, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Maryland announced.

Officials said one of the three, Patrik Mathews, a former soldier in the Canadian army, entered the U.S. illegally. Mathews, a trained combat engineer, was discharged from the Canadian military after his white supremacist ties came to light, The New York Times reported.

The others charged include Brian Mark Lemley of Elkton, Md., and Newark, Del., and William Garfield Bilbrough IV of Denton, Md., according to the U.S. Attorney's office.

The complaint accuses Lemley and Mathews of transporting a firearm and ammunition with intent to commit a felony and it charges Lemley and Bilbrough with allegedly transporting and harboring aliens and conspiring to do so.