Irresponsible mother cashes in

[ChuckDizzle]

Hi gun store, I'm calif 15-22's brother. He is a paranoid schizophrenic and may be a danger to himself or someone else. I think that he may come to your store and buy a gun. Do not sell him one.

So should the gun store deny you a firearm based solely on my phone call even though you pass a federal background check?

Are you just making up stuff that has no relation or relevance to the case at hand? Are you assuming the gun store doesn't notice the odd behavior of a previous customer? The bottom line is you don't know all the evidence from this case so you'll just fill in the blanks with conjecture that is most beneficial to your argument stores have no duty of car at all to the public when selling inherently dangerous tools to that public.

What about a car salesman that sells a sport bike to a clearly intoxicated person?

[ChuckDizzle]

there wasn't one. the gunshop settled before it went to a jury.

Well then if they settled for $2.2 mil it wasn't looking good for them.

[SamsDX]

who is the gunshop required to heed the warning from?

For instance, a spouse pissed off that you spend money on guns instead of her, could call up the gunshop and tell them not to sell to you because you are crazy. should the gunshop take her word for it, or should they require her provide some legal documentation of the fact (which the mother in this case most likely did not have)?

Whether or not a duty is imposed on the gun shop, and whether such duty was breached, would depend entirely on the circumstances in which the warnings were made and the sale was completed. Whatever was presented as evidence, it was apparently enough for a to convince defendants and their counsel that a jury to would find in the mother's favor, and she would have carried her burden of proof. All this is viewed through the lens of hindsight, and that is all I suggested - that a post-hoc legal finding of negligence wasn't completely unjustified based on the fact that some warning was made but wasn't heeded.

Now, if it turns out that the warning was more along the lines of what you suggested, we wouldn't be having this discussion, would we? Unfortunately, something did go wrong, and someone did die, so we have to look to the entirety of the circumstances to see who was responsible for the outcome.

[Californio]

Unless you have been adjudicated mentally unfit by a Court of Law, your rights cannot be taken away. The Court is wrong, they cannot have it both ways, either you have rights or you don't, the FFL is not a Court of Law.

This is a back door attack against the 2nd Amendment.

[SamsDX]

Only if she knew what gun dealer you were going to buy from. And even if she did, and they erred on the side of caution and refused, you can always go to another shop somewhere else and make the transaction. If I owned a shop, had a person who claimed to be a certain person's mother, and was making heart-felt pleas to me to block that sale - I probably would. And then I'd call the police and make a report of what happened.

This is probably what most reasonable and prudent people would do.

[deckhandmike]

If I was a gun store owner and received that call from a panicked mother there is no way I would of made that sale. Right to refuse business. I know I don't need 60$ that bad. It's not like you get calls like that everyday. I've walked away from ppt's for less squirrelly stuff.

[pacrat]

I think that's a bit harsh there OP. This women lost her husband and now her daughter. Not saying the lawsuit was the answer but I believe the Gun Store could have heeded some of the mother's concern and not sold her a gun. Small town of 800 people I think the Pawn Shop/Gun Store could have refused the daughter and things might be different.

Harsh, yes, the world is a harsh place. People need to accept responsibility for their own actions or inactions. Not blame their shortcomings on others.


Flip the scenario coin in today's litigious society.

Gun shop refuses daughter her constitutional right to purchase a firearm. On the say so of an anonymous phone call "claiming to be the mother" of the customer.

Gun shop is then sued for "Civil Rights Violation" by the daughter.

Placing blame for the daughters actions. And the Mother/Father's lack of action. On the business that sold the tool that the daughter committed a heinous crime with is deplorable.

Would the mother have sued a Ford, Chevy, or Chrysler dealer if the daughter had run over her husband? Would the Ford, Chevy, Chrysler dealer be held in any way responsible for the daughter running over her father? Even if the mother had called the dealer on the phone and asked that they not sell her a car?

Would the gun grabbing "Brady Bunch" have supplied her with a high powered DC attorney under those circumstances? Highly unlikely. This is just another "Legislation by Litigation" scenario that payed off.

One can always pull the woulda, shoulda, coulda, and maybe things would be different card. But that again, is always after the fact.

JM2c

[TRICKSTER]

Are you just making up stuff that has no relation or relevance to the case at hand? Are you assuming the gun store doesn't notice the odd behavior of a previous customer? The bottom line is you don't know all the evidence from this case so you'll just fill in the blanks with conjecture that is most beneficial to your argument stores have no duty of car at all to the public when selling inherently dangerous tools to that public.

What about a car salesman that sells a sport bike to a clearly intoxicated person?

I was commenting on calif 15-22's post and asking him a question.
You were the one making stuff up claiming that you would "trust the folks on the jury who spent days hearing evidence on the matter made the right decision barring any other facts" when if you had read the article, you would have known that this never went to a jury. Talk about filling in the blanks with conjecture that is most beneficial to your argument.

[SamsDX]

Flip the scenario coin in today's litigious society.

Gun shop refuses daughter her constitutional right to purchase a firearm. On the say so of an anonymous phone call "claiming to be the mother" of the customer.

Gun shop is then sued for "Civil Rights Violation" by the daughter.

That's a case in which the plaintiff would have lost. And lost big. The circumstances of the warning being given are such that refusing the sale would have been the reasonable thing to do. Unless there is some other pretext for refusing to serve a customer (e.g., race, gender, national origin, religion, etc.) and even then, given the potential harm from arming someone, a judge would be hard-pressed to find a civil rights violation. I recall a gun range/shop in Florida that refused sales to Muslims, and the court didn't find in favor of CAIR.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/muslim-free-zone-gun-store-ruling_us_565d0170e4b079b2818b8dea

[MrOrange]

[MurdaJ]

and if I was a pissed-off wife, I might just call every gunshop in the area and tell them the same story. the point is, why should the gunshop just take the word of a stranger over the phone?

I understand your point, but would you have made the sale as described in the article?

I wouldn't go so far as to hold the gun store responsible, but the mother calling wasn't the only red flag

[MrOrange]

That's a case in which the plaintiff would have lost. And lost big. The circumstances of the warning being given are such that refusing the sale would have been the reasonable thing to do. Unless there is some other pretext for refusing to serve a customer (e.g., race, gender, national origin, religion, etc.) and even then, given the potential harm from arming someone, a judge would be hard-pressed to find a civil rights violation. I recall a gun range/shop in Florida that refused sales to Muslims, and the court didn't find in favor of CAIR.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/entry/...b079b2818b8dea

Following directions without question from a phone call is reasonable? Not on my planet.

As to the ruling in the case brought by the terrorist support organization:

"The judge simply said that we didn’t have standing because nobody from our organization actually went and got service denied," CAIR Florida executive director Hassan Shibly told Fox 13. "If somebody from the Muslim community were to go and get a denial of service then Andy will be liable."




Almost forgot the main thrust of the thread: If Mom was out for justice and not the money, then a settlement where there is no fault is an abject failure. Except for the money. I feel sorry for her for having a mentally unstable daughter, but that's tempered by the fact that she didn't get her committed. But the money helps.

If she wants to be taken seriously, then she should donate every last cent (that the Brady Bunch didn't walk off with) to mental health organizations.

[calif 15-22]

If I was a gun store owner and received that call from a panicked mother there is no way I would of made that sale. Right to refuse business. I know I don't need 60$ that bad. It's not like you get calls like that everyday. I've walked away from ppt's for less squirrelly stuff.

This is where I was coming from. Of course the Pawn shop was well within their rights to sell AND I get that my brother Trickster could call in and say I'm crazy, but from what I read the owner said "she seemed nervous and in a hurry" and this was right after the mother called in. So you have both.

As a Gun Store you are within your rights to sell if the customer passes background. But in this specific case you have the mom calling and the daughter seeming nervous and in a hurry. Toss in this is a town of 800 and I bet the Gun Shop or people there probably knew her since she had been there before.

Again I'm not supporting the lawsuit or begrudging the gun store.

[RandyD]

As an attorney, I take interest in these circumstances. There is a lot going on in this story, and it needs to be succinctly summed up. This is how I see it.

Gun Store and Murderer
There is a gun store that sold a handgun to a woman that was a paranoid schizophrenic. The woman’s father took the handgun away, so the woman goes back and purchases a second handgun, and she eventually murders her father with the second handgun.

The gun store was known for willfully violating firearm sales statutes and regulations, but the article has a pregnant silence regarding the two sales, and if they were conducted in violation to any statute or regulation. In appears that in both cases the murderer was legally qualified to purchase a handgun, and she passed the background check twice.

ATF Form 4473, asks an operative question, 11f, “Have you ever been adjudicated as a mental defective or have you ever been committed to a mental institution?” The article again has a pregnant silence pertaining to how the murderer answered this question, or how she should have answered the question.

The mental institutions that the murderer had been in had apparently not issued any report to any authorities or taken any action that would have placed her on a list of prohibited persons. The mental health providers had the best information on the murderer’s emotional condition, and they had the ability to initiate a process where the murderer would be adjudicated as a prohibited person. The gun store owner and employees are not in the business to make professional medical assessments of their customers or to even evaluate if their customers are qualified or prohibited from owning a firearm. The ATF has established a process with procedures for gun stores follow to prevent the sales to prohibited persons, and it appears the gun store followed and complied with these procedures.

Gun Store and Mother
The mother of the murderer, suspected the daughter would try to purchase another handgun, and called the gun store informing them of the daughter’s condition and plead with them not to sell her another handgun. The gun store ignored this warning, and sold a second handgun to the murderer.

Father and Mother
The father, who was murdered, had mental illness in his family. His sister committed suicide, and his brother had as similar condition to his daughter, the murderer.

Despite both the father and mother knowing their daughter’s mental issues and their family history of mental issues, they only took superficial steps to prevent their daughter from becoming a murderer. The father took away the first handgun she purchased. The mother made several phone calls to law enforcement and the gun store seeking their assistance. I find it interesting that the mother was a retired social worker, a profession that is basically known to do nothing more than to provide referrals.

Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence
The opportunistic lawyers from the D.C.-based Brady Center to Prevent Gun Violence exploited this situation by filing a lawsuit.

End Result.
The daughter murders her father. Father dies. Daughter gets committed her to a state mental-health facility. Mother loses both daughter and husband, but gets to divide a 2.2 million dollar settlement with the Brady Center.

Who caused the murder? The murderer did this act on her own. She planned the murder, and she had enough presence of mind to buy the firearm, load it, and use it to kill her father. She is on record saying that she intended to kill herself next but could not bring herself to do that act. Its amazing how murderers have the ability to kill others and claim they want to also kill themselves but lack the ability to do so. The mother and father knew their daughter was a danger, but took the most superficial steps to prevent that danger from occurring. The mental health professionals that had been in the murderer’s life for the past six years, appear to have done nothing to prevent the murderer from harming others. In the end, a gun store, accepted responsibility for not making a connection between a telephone warning from the mother and selling a firearm to a person who intended on using the firearm to commit murder.

This is our legal system. When a tragedy occurs someone with money has to pay.

[mlevans66]

As a mental health admin I can tell you it hard AF to auth to disclose. Now if you are trying to take care of the person for the courts that a whole OTHER set of issues that take loads of time to do. The mom really did all she can but the background check is full of holes for the mentally ill. At the same time the libs will use your MI against you for the sake of pushing there agendas( https://www.nytimes.com/2017/02/07/o...licy.html?_r=0). This was a sad case. That woman would have used anything to end her life.