Sandy Hook Families Want To Sue – Why Are We Picking On Sanders About This?


The New York Daily News published a ripper piece on Bernie Sanders about his stance on suing gun manufacturers for the actions of mass shooters. People are having difficulty understanding how Sanders can say he is against the gun lobby, while fighting against allowing people to sue gun manufacturers for the actions of the people that buy the guns they make.

It started at Sandy Hook

The family of the victims of the Sandy Hook massacre, gunned down with an AR-15 assault rifle by Adam Lanza in September 2012 are trying to sue the manufacturer of the weapon. Sanders has expressed concern that allowing the suit to continue through the courts will set a dangerous precedent.

Their claim is that the weapon was manufactured with one purpose – to kill people (and it was). They are arguing that the manufacturer is at fault for the deaths because they manufactured the weapon, sold it to a distributor, who sold it to a dealer, who sold it to Adam Lanza’s mother, who didn’t put it away safely. Every event that happened involving the manufacturer was legal. The manufacturer could legally make the weapon. The distributor and dealer were legally permitted to sell the weapon. Lanza’s mother was legally able to purchase the weapon.

The biggest fault lay in the failure to keep the weapon out of the hands of Lanza. Unfortunately – his mother was the first casualty in Lanza’s path as he began his rampage and she cannot be sued in her grave. She paid for her carelessness with her life.

Sanders is right – and everyone is giving him shit about it because it’s a campaign year and they think it will paint him as siding with the gun lobby. Anything to stain his campaign.

I’m going to try to explain the ramifications of this proposal, and why Sanders is against it.

Picture this:

It’s 2:17 a.m. and I wake up and have to pee. I walk out of my bedroom, dressed only in my nightgown. I couldn’t find my slippers in the dark, so I was barefoot.

OUCH! Holy crap! A LEGO! Ow! That HURT!

I’m hopping around the upstairs hallway in so much pain that the decibel level of my screams could wake the dead folks in the cemetery two towns over. Oh shit! Stairs!

I fall down the stairs and break my arm.

I am so pissed that I want to sue the crap out of the Lego manufacturer because their toy is lethal when stepped on in the dark.

The problem with that:

The Lego manufacturer didn’t leave the Lego in my upstairs hallway. That dubious honor goes to my lovely child. The Lego manufacturer made their toy, honestly believing that the people that purchased their product would use it in a safe and responsible way.

It is not the manufacturer’s fault that my child left the Lego in my hallway. If I sued the Lego manufacturer, my case would get laughed out of court faster than I fell down those damn stairs.

Like the Lego manufacturer, the gun manufacturer is not responsible for the actions of the end user of their legally manufactured and sold product. If the weapon had a defect and discharged accidentally and caused a death – by all means sue the crap out of the manufacturer. Since the weapon Lanza used obviously had no defects and functioned at peak efficiency – the manufacturer cannot be held liable.

Where this would ultimately lead:

Susie goes out and ties on a big one. She hops behind the wheel of her trusty car and speeds off. About a mile down the road, she runs over little Bobby and kills him. Since Susie has no money, and didn’t have insurance on her car, little Bobby’s family decides to sue the car manufacturer…

You see the problem with this right?

The car manufacturer did not pour all those drinks down Susie’s throat or force her to drive in that condition. The car was in perfect condition – good brakes, properly working headlights, engine in tip-top shape – no reason that, properly operated, the vehicle could have been at fault for running over poor little Bobby.


If we set a precedent by allowing the Sandy Hook families to sue the gun manufacturer, this kind of suit and so many more like it will be just around the corner.

I could give examples all day long, but I think I have made my point. This is not the direction we need to go in. Rather than trying to sue the manufacturer for doing something totally and completely legal – we need to be working toward making assault rifles illegal (like they used to be) or at the very least more strongly regulated.

What we need here is some common sense gun regulation, not the ability to sue a manufacturer for something they had absolutely no control over.

Please start using your brains to think things through, folks.

Featured image by Theo Stroomer/Getty Images.