What possessed the New York NAACP to waste their hard working members time, money and resources on such a silly and frivolous no-traction lawsuit like this? Any lawyer with two brain cells to rub together could have told them this case was idiotic from the get go.
What’s the upside for them here? I can’t imagine it’s publicity because this case makes them look like idiots. I can possibly understand testing the legal waters to sue gun makers as some other localities have done, but to sue on the basis that there is intentionally differential and discriminatory harm specifically to black people via gun sales is an asinine legal argument.
From Salon - NAACP suit against gun makers dismissed
I kind of expect that there will be a Glock ad at the gun club, but I can’t remember the last time I saw a Glock ad during the middle of a Chris Rock stand-up special, a sports event, a cartoon, or NYPD Blue.
Firearms ads show up in a few specific places: magazines targeted to gun owners, gun clubs, shooting ranges, and firearms expos.
Guns are typically marketed for collector value, as show pieces, for target shooting, for hunting, or for protection of one’s family. They are not typically marketed as fashion accessories in Cosmo, as cool things to play with at Toys 'R Us, or during hip hop time on MTV.
So where exactly do they get the idea of ‘irresponsible marketing’?
catsix, improper marketing in this case has nothing to do with ads. Here it would be, for example, setting up for sales in a state where such sales are legal all out of proportion to the market for firearms in that state.
Example: say Virginia has a natural market for 5,000 Glocks a year. If the manufacturer is selling to Virgnia wholesalers 50,000 Glocks a year, it is, under the theory, improper marketing - it knows that the excess sales are being made to persons intending to bring them to states where such sales are illegal. It is effectively conspiring to evade the gun control laws of the neighboring states.
What is the NAACP messing with the second ammendment for in the first place?
Taking on issues like this is just a bad idea for them. They are just going to drive away potential members that don’t agree with the positions they are taking on issues. They will also earn the ire of everyday folks like me who are not black. The more they anger the rest of the voters the less power they will have to enact change.
Apparently criminals aren’t going to get their hands on a gun illegally because a wholesaler didn’t legally buy one from a manufacturer?
Stupidity abounds.
Considering the mess of paperwork that has to be done in order to purchase a gun from an FFL holding dealer, who had to purchase it from the wholesaler who had to purchase it from the manufacturer, how would the state, other than tracing an individual gun to an illegal sale be able to ‘know’ that those guns are being sold for illegal transport? For all the state ‘knows’ they’re sitting in a warehouse as inventory.
Of course no other industry ever has significantly more inventory than they do demand. After all, it’s not as if you see car dealerships offering ‘excellent deals’ at the end of the year because they want to move all that inventory they over-bought. And with all practicality, it makes more sense to have a stockpile of guns, especially when new laws come around that do things like limit the magazine capacity of a specific handgun. If I can legally go to an FFL dealer and buy one that sat in the safe at his shop or at the wholesaler’s warehouse for 5 years because it was manufactured pre-ban, then I sure hope he’s got a hundred of them lying around.
It seems to me like yet another responsibility dodge. Let’s blame the evil gun maker because without that, Jimmy Q. Gangbanger wouldn’t have shot those old ladies at the Burger King. Jimmy Q. Gangbanger doesn’t know how many 19s Glock shipped to Virginia wholesalers, all he knows is how to find one he can steal or where he can buy a stolen one. Since when does the state get to assume that an effort to make money by keeping your legal customers happy (as in having what they want in stock when they want it) is an obvious attempt to make illegal sales because they hate black people in NYC?
The NAACP also ought to look at who used those handguns in crimes, and how many times that gun had actually been stolen at some point from the person who bought it legally.
If Stanley tools has 100,000 hammers in a warehouse knowing that it’ll probably only sell 10,000 hammers this year, that does not make Stanley tools responsible if I steal my neighbor’s hammer and beat someone to death with it.
Good point catsix, as this was another blatant attempt by the pro-control people in their attempt to legislate firearms regulations via the courts vice state legislature. Unfortunately, this attempt cost the gun manufacturer’s about 10 mil in legal fees to fight this bs.
Further to what Sua said, wasn’t there a case a few years ago in New York state, where the families of victims of gun violence successfully sued twenty gun manufacturers (of which several were found liable) of improper marketing, i.e., knowingly flooding markets in loose gun-control states like Louisiana because they knew that they were selling indirectly to an illegal black market for guns in tight gun-control states, like New York?
The NAACP is an advocacy group. I doubt very much that they had any expectation there suit would win in the courts, but that wasn’t the point. By drawing attention to the problem, they hope to increase the relative importance of gun control on the agendas of federal, state, and local governments.
You may not agree with their goals, but their means aren’t particularly unusual.
And the evidence for this accusation that firearms manufacturers are deliberately trying to get their product sold on an illegal black market, and the evidence that said black market exists in some form other than stolen firearms in a way tangible enough to have any effect whatsoever on these alleged victims is where?
That sounds suspiciously like the reasoning used in the Dredd Scott decision. If a state passes a law whose efficacy depends on the actions of residents of other states, it’s their problem if the law doesn’t work, not the residents of the other states. Blaming the residents of the other states is like blaming the water for ignoring a dam rather than blaming the architect who came up with the idiotic idea of building a dam across half the river in the hope that it would cut the flow of water in half. One is obligated to obey the laws of the state in which one resides. One has no obligation to avoid actions that will promote lawbreaking in other states. This is nothing less than a legal slight of hand attempting to extend the jurisdiction of the most restrictive states to all of the other states. “Conspiring to evade the gun control laws of the neighboring states” is just another way to say “ignoring laws whose jurisdiction you are not under”.
Furthermore, what if there are 20 manufacturers, each selling 2,500 Glocks a year to Virginia? Are they “conspiring to evade the gun control laws of the neighboring states”?
As I recall from coverage of the trial, out of the twenty manufacturers sued, the several who were found liable were the ones for whom internal communications said things like “flood the markets in the weak gun-control states, and they’ll get to the tight gun-control states in other ways”. I remember being a bit shocked at how brazen they were, though they never came out and said “we’re selling to the black market indirectly”. That, and the fact that they knew they were selling a volume of firearms out of all proportion to the population (again, demonstrated by internal communications like email).
Did Texas repeal its murder statute? Is assault now legal in Oklahoma? Did I miss a memo?
I really don’t get your analogy at all.
An example: New York has obscenely high cigarette taxes as part of a measure to reduce smoking in the state of New York. If I, as a tobacco retailer located just over the Hudson River in New Jersey, start increasing my stock of cigarettes to service all the nicotine-addicted Manhattanites popping over the river to find cheap cartons of smokes, should I be liable in some way to New York or its citizens? Am I using “improper marketing”?
And if New York law provided that it is a tort to sell tobacco to citizens (assuming that such sales create cognizable harm, which is s big stretch, and if a New Jersey retailer intentionally increased his stock for the purpose of increasing sales to New Yorkers, then damn straight he could get popped for a tort in New York.
Seeing as he quoted your statement, not mine, I don’t see how I’m responsible. Perhaps it works in a manner similar to how sellers in one state are responsible for illegal gun possession in another.
There’s a big difference between enabling an illegal action, and actually performing it. I wouldn’t consider someone who sells guns to someone who takes them across a state border to be under the other state’s jurisdiction. But you could posit a hypothetical in which he walks up to the border with a bunch of guns and throws them across the border to a confederate. Technically he wouldn’t be within the jurisdiction of the second state. And the Mann act could easily have been evaded by driving a girl to the state border, having her get out and walk a few hundred feet, then picking her up on the other side. Heck, a drug smuggler could throw some pot across the US border, walk to the other side, and then pick it up, thus avoiding American international smuggling charges. Or fill a truck with 100 tons of gravel and one kilo of pot. We can come up with all sorts of silly exceptions to laws. But in the real world, it doesn’t work that way.
So your position is that state laws apply not just to state residents in the state, not just state residents while they’re in another state, but to residents of other states, while they are in those other states, as long as their actions are a causative factor in an illegal act in the first state? Even if one could sue New Jersey retailers, I find it difficult to believe that one could do so in New York. If I go to New York and someone wrongs me, can I sue under California law? Does this apply internationally, too? During prohibition, could the US have demanded extradiction of Canadian particpants in alcohol smuggling, even if they never left Canada?
So if I am in Texas and conspire with someone else to murder you, and he shoots you in Oklahoma, then I haven’t committed murder?
Oh, wait, that pretty much is your position. Throwing dope across the border, then picking it up on the other side, enables a person to avoid smuggling charges? Ridiculous.
Yes. If I manufacture a defective automobile in Texas and it explodes and kills people in Oklahoma, I should be and will be subject to the products liability laws of Oklahoma. Just like I may be liable under Oklahoma law if I intentionally flood the Texas market with guns for the purpose of enabling Oklahoma consumers to evade that state’s strict gun sales laws.
Depends on the nature of the wrong. If all the events of the tort occurred in and were directed to New York, then California law has no application. If it involves California in some way–say, for instance, that you were fraudulently induced to purchase an item, and it was to be delivered in California–then California law may well apply.
Yes. Absolutely, no question about it, just like we have demanded (and received) the extradition of any number of foreign drug smugglers who never stepped foot in the U.S. If you direct your actions towards another jurisdiction, it is entirely reasonable for that other jurisdiction to apply its laws to you.
Just a note: the newspapers here in NY are indicating that the NAACP, NY City, and several other groups are taking this verdict as a “victory” due to Judge Weinstein comments (which can be seen in the original OP) - apparently they feel his notes provide a ‘road map’ :dubious: for use in future Gun Sale lawsuits.
The gun manufacturers feel that Weinstein’s opinions have no bearing on anything, and that this and other cases are friviolus
So if, say, I were to send propaganda to China extolling the virtues of the Falun Gong sect, it would be reasonable for China to seek my extradition for trial? **
OK, I’m not a litigator and it’s been a long, long time since I had first year Civ Pro, but is this entirely accurate? I vaguely recall that World-Wide Volkswagon held that where a car purchased in New York by New York residents was taken into Oklahoma, where an accident occurred, that the Oklahoma courts didn’t have jurisdiction to hear a products liability case against the New York retailer. Granted, that’s a jurisdiction case – I guess the New York courts could apply Oklahoma law – but that still strikes me as odd. What you’re basically saying is that a New York auto retailer with no out of state business is responsible for knowing and complying with the law of all fifty states, on the outside chance one of his cars might be taken there. For fairly obvious reasons, that’s absurd.
Natch, it’s a different story for the manufacturer – as in your example – because he is, after all, selling in all fifty states. But that raises an interesting question: suppose a gun manufacturer pulled out of New York entirely – no retail or wholesale sales, no manufacturing, no nothing. He still sells in big quantities in less-restrictive states. Is he still liable to New York plaintiffs?
The disturbing aspect of this line of argument is its implication for the federal system as a whole. What it basically means is that the state with the most restrictive laws can de facto impose its will on the other forty-nine. Kind of like when high-tax states complain about “unfair competition” from low-tax states – could you envision a lawsuit against a company that relocated to a low-tax state for lost tax revenue, on the basis that that company was doing so to “evade” the tax law of the high-tax state?