The Newtown Lawsuit and the Moral Work of Gun Control -- The New Yorker

[flamin lib]

http://www.newyorker.com/news/daily-comment/newtown-lawsuit-moral-work-gun-control

"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."

snip

"The lawsuit is discouraging because the death-by-gun lobby has successfully advocated for legislative prophylactics that prevent gunmakers, almost uniquely among American manufacturers, from ever being held responsible for the deaths that their products cause. If a carmaker made a car that was known to be wildly unsafe, and then advertised it as unsafe, liabilities would result. The gun lobby is, or believes itself to be, immune. Some experts have outlined legal principles that might let sanity triumph, but it is hard to think it will. (Right-wing judges tend, these days, to be more creative than liberal ones in creating legal precedents that no one ever before imagined possible.)"

snip

"But all of the talk about legal and illegal weapons, automatic and semi-automatic—as about the treatment of the psychologically troubled—evades the simple, central point: it ought to be very, very difficult, as it is in every other civilized country, to get your hands on a weapon whose only purpose is to kill people quickly. The N.R.A. and their allies make it very, very easy."

snip

"The underlying politics of gun control has always been the same: the majority of Americans agree that there should be limits and controls on the manufacture and sale and ownership of weapons intended only to kill en masse, while a small minority feels, with a fanatic passion, that there shouldn’t. In a process familiar to any student of society, the majority of people in favor of gun sanity care about a lot of other things, too, and think about them far more often; the gun crazy think about guns all the time, and vote on the issue with fanatic intensity."

==========

A very good read.