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for the children, episode 2

For the Children™., Episode 2: People kill People

A jury has awarded the widow of teacher Barry Grunow $1.2 million from a gun distributor.

Pam Grunow's lawsuit accused Valor Corp of distributing a gun that was "unsafe, defective and lacked features that would have prevented a minor from using it."

No word about suing anyone for distributing a parent that "would have prevented the minor from using a gun."

Pam Grunow's lawyer asked for $76 million. But the jury found gun distributor Valor Corporation 5 percent liable for Grunow's death. The owner of the gun and the school board held the most of the liability, the jury found.

The jury didn't find any liability for Nathanial Brazill, who pulled the trigger. Brazill stole the unloaded gun and bullets from a cookie tin stashed away in a dresser drawer of family friend Elmore McCray.

I find the jury guilty of complete idiocy. I find the mother of Nathanial Brazill guilty of raising a child who has such blatant disregard for human life. I find Nathanial Brazill guilty of, well...murder.

Let's just hang a sign on the door to the halls of justice that says "Out of Order."

YOU'RE out of order! YOU'RE out of order! THE WHOLE TRIAL is out of order!

Comments

Pure lunacy.

Yep...the court is out of order. So is this country. Canada's starting to look mighty appealing

Score another point for Charles Dickens, the law is a ass :-(

Score another point for Charles Dickens, the law is an ass :-(

Oh, give me a fucking break!!!!
I have a feeling we'll be hearing the name "Nathanial Brazill" on America's Most Wanted in a decade or so.

No word about suing anyone for distributing a parent that "would have prevented the minor from using a gun."

Yeah, that pretty much sums it up for me. Dayum.

My prediction is that these dumbasses will have their verdict shoved right back up their behinds by an appeals court. Of course, that will never be covered by the media. The same geniuses that trumpet an fifty gazillion dollar verdict against "big tobacco" and forget to mention when some sensible judge says that the jury didn't come within 1,000 miles of following the law.

I agree about the parents. Idiots. However, I don't disagree with finding the owner of the gun partly responsible. A cookie tin in a dresser isn't really the most responsible way in the world to secure a handgun, especially if you have friends who raise kids like young Nathaniel. I hope that the award is rejected on appeal.

On a sidenote, have you ever seen any statistics on the occupations of jurors Michele? I have the sneaking suspicion that potential jurors working in analytical fields such as engineering, programming and such dont get selected too often for cases such as this.

I agree! I wrote about the same piece myself.

"However, I don't disagree with finding the owner of the gun partly responsible. A cookie tin in a dresser isn't really the most responsible way in the world to secure a handgun, especially if you have friends who raise kids like young Nathaniel. "

Uhhhh... do you really want to suggest that all citizens, in the privacy of their own homes, are now legally responsible for the behavior of other people's children?

Sounds like a bad idea to me. What about kitchen knives? Cleaning materials which are poisonous? Rope or twine used for strangulation? A baseball bat, used as a bludgeon?

Can I stop now?

Troy,

Ultimately, kitchen knives are designed to be used for cooking, cleaning materials (poisonous or otherwise) are designed to be used for cleaning, rope and twine are designed for use for securing things, and a baseball bat is designed for use as a sporting item.

There are really only two uses built into the design of (most) guns. One is to kill something, the other is to intimidate with the threat of killing. That is what they are designed to do, they do that very well.

If the pro-gun movement is about users being responsible rather than being over-legislated, well then they need to be held accountable for the responsibility of their actions when they do not appropriately secure their weapon. I have a real hard time imagining that securing a weapon in a cookie tin can be ever classified as responsible.

I'm sure the owner of that gun didn't feel the need to take precautions against a neighborhood kid coming into his house and stealing his gun and bullets.

If it was the mother's gun, stuffed in a cookie tin in the home where the kid resided, it would be a different story.

My house is not babyproofed because I have no babies. Does that mean I can be held responsible if some woman with a baby breaks into my house and the baby swallows some cleaning fluid?

I wonder what features could possibly be designed for a gun to "prevent minors from using it". Do you suppose they mean trigger locks? Biometric palm scanners on the butt of the gun? Rectal - I mean, retinal scans? What if every victim/family of a violent, gun-related crime sued the manufacturer for not having features to prevent anyone but the registered owner from using it?

BTW, love the quote. One of my all time favorite movies.

Yet another stinging rebuke of our current tort system. The biggest problem is that, more often than not, the juries are comprised of the lowest common denominator they can find: the chronically unemployed and the stupid. In short, democrats. Well, there's also the elderly, but they're not necessarily democrats unless they're stupid. Show me a smart juror and I'll show you an attorney's peremptory challenge. The educated, conservative professional juror is more rare than Bigfoot and more valuable than platinum. Assclown juries awarding obscene judgements like this make our legal system the laughingstock of the world.

chad,

a gun is designed to propel a projectile. that's all. what the person using the gun decides to point the gun at is not included in the guns design.

likewise, knives are designed to cut things. save for some special circumstances, the type of thing that is cut is not included in the design.

even the projectiles are not designed to 'kill', they're designed to make different types of holes.

in the end the culprit is always the human user.

never the inanimate object--or the maker thereof.

even the placement of the gun....if I place my loaded gun, in a place I think is safe, in my house and someone steals that gun, why would I be responsible for anything?

Stealing, like murder, is a crime. why, even had I placed the gun, loaded, on my kitchen table, would I be responsible for the actions of criminals?

in the end the responsilbility falls again, to the person, and the actions they choose. And to no one else.

chad,

a gun is designed to propel a projectile. that's all. what the person using the gun decides to point the gun at is not included in the guns design.

likewise, knives are designed to cut things. save for some special circumstances, the type of thing that is cut is not included in the design.

even the projectiles are not designed to 'kill', they're designed to make different types of holes.

in the end the culprit is always the human user.

never the inanimate object--or the maker thereof.

even the placement of the gun....if I place my loaded gun, in a place I think is safe, in my house and someone steals that gun, why would I be responsible for anything?

Stealing, like murder, is a crime. why, even had I placed the gun, loaded, on my kitchen table, would I be responsible for the actions of criminals?

in the end the responsilbility falls again, to the person, and the actions they choose. And to no one else.

"The biggest problem is that, more often than not, the juries are comprised of the lowest common denominator they can find: the chronically unemployed and the stupid. In short, democrats."

Please. Michele, you need a little rolling eyes graphic or something, because it's doubtful words could do justice to the idiocy of that little gem, which is matched only by the idiocy of people suing anyone else just because they can rather than because they should.

Chad, far more guns are used for target shooting (yeah, it's a sport -- sorta like what you play with that baseball bat) than are used for killing of any sort; hunting use (yeah, it's killing) is far more common than "intimidation". Your fear of firearms is hindering your perception of reality, I think.

Another popular use of firearms is self defense, and the most credible studies place this use at something like a million and a half incidents a year in the US. "Securing" a gun to prevent a burglar from stealing it also makes it unavailable for immediate defense.

Now, if I can't defend myself because you've made me lock up my guns, can I sue you for my damages?

Chad, far more guns are used for target shooting (yeah, it's a sport -- sorta like what you play with that baseball bat) than are used for killing of any sort; hunting use (yeah, it's killing) is far more common than "intimidation". Your fear of firearms is hindering your perception of reality, I think.

Another popular use of firearms is self defense, and the most credible studies place this use at something like a million and a half incidents a year in the US. "Securing" a gun to prevent a burglar from stealing it also makes it unavailable for immediate defense.

Now, if I can't defend myself because you've made me lock up my guns, can I sue you for my damages?

I am quite aware of the use of guns for target practice. Indeed, there are some guns that are used and designed to be used exclusively for target practice. You'll notice I said '(most) guns' in my comment, and that was to allow for this.

All that being said, the fact that more guns are used for target practice than for the actual killing of random people is fine, and desirable even. It does not change the fact that the basic design of a basic gun is to kill or maim, or threaten with killing and maiming. While more handguns are likely used for target practice, more handguns are likely purchased (rifles are of course a different story, I've never met anyone that went hunting with a pistol) for self-defense.

You can only use your gun for self-defense in two ways: you can kill someone with it, or you can threaten to kill someone with it. That's not especially surprising, since that is what (most)guns are designed for.

So now we get back to the idea of responsible gun ownership. For years we have heard that the gun lobby would like to just make sure that gun owners self-regulated themselves for responsibility. This is not happening, period. When it starts happening, with people treating their weapons with the proper respect they are due, then there will be a weakening in the support for knee-jerk repressive gun laws.

I am an ex-Marine. There is a very real possibility that I have sent more rounds downrange, at paper targets, than many of my detractors on this thread -- probably a decent possilbility of some of you put together. There is an amazing disconnect between what I was taught in gun safety and the things we hear about in the news or in some first-hand knowledge.

Keeping a gun in a cookie tin isn't responsible, by any stretch of the imagination.

The reason you should be more responsible for the placement of the gun is because of what the gun is designed to accomplish. As a handgun owner in America, you are saying that "I have this gun because I am interested in keeping myself, my family, my household, my neighborhood (if need be) and my country (again, if need be) secure. How can you keep them secure when you're in denial about a gun being like any other mundane item in your house.

Chad, I'm not in denial -- I grew up with guns, and I was probably using them responsibly before you were born; my father taught me to shoot when I was ten, and the guns were never locked up (and never used without permission and supervision, either). This was common at the time. A gun is a tool -- a potentially dangerous tool, but a tool nonetheless -- and mythologizing it somehow (as you seem to be doing) isn't going to help with its acceptance.

So you're an ex-Marine. My gunsmith is also an ex-Marine; he shoots thirty or forty thousand rounds a year, in competition and just for the hell of it. He has a shotgun (loaded, one in the chamber) leaning against his nightstand, and a .40 S&W (also loaded, one in the chamber) on the nightstand. So does his roommate in the other bedroom. They're both responsible people, IMHO -- there are no children in the home, and it would take multiple criminal offenses for a third party to get their hands on the guns.

The man in this case wasn't the parent of the kid in question -- he was just a friend of the family. The gun was out of sight in the man's bedroom, in a cookie tin, which was out of sight in a drawer; it was also unloaded. The kid stole the gun, possibly by breaking into the house and certainly by snooping around; the owner didn't show him where it was, or even tell the kid that he had a gun. How many layers do you want?

You want to put the responsibility which belongs to the kid's parents, on the bystander... and I ain't buying it.

(You talk about gun safety -- the prosecutor in this case waved the gun around the courtroom, pointing it at several witnesses, saying "but it's unloaded". This is a violation of the basic rules of gun safety, and it earned him a lecture from the judge... the same judge who allowed the trial to become a gun-control forum.)

Troy,

first of all, I must apologize. I will admit I did not have a decent appraisal of the situation being discussed. That reflects bad upon me, as I should have read the story closer.

That being said, if your ex-Marine gunsmith and/or his roommate are leaving loaded guns as you have described unattended, then that cannot ever be considered responsible behavior. I don't know where they learned that, but I assure you it was not in the modern military.

In this particular instance, even though I vigorously posted opinions that have leaned otherwise, the gun owner was probably not culpable.

I have no problems with guns. I have no problem with people owning them. I only wish that the gun owners would treat them as responsibly as they say they do. Am I truly mythologizing the gun issue or is this country trivializing it? Hmmm... either way, I think I'd rather err on the side of caution.

But getting back to this case, at what point does the owner become responsible? Is he responsible when the gun is stowed together with the ammunition? Is he responsible if the cookie tin isn't in a drawer? Is he responsible if the cookie tin isn't in his bedroom?

And I will agree, the prosecutor was an idiot. (Maybe even a bigger idiot than I am for not having my ducks lined up before I posted. Again, I apologize for that.)

You ask me how many layers I want. Let me theorize a bit. If a police officer was the gun owner in question and the weapon happened to be his service sidearm, I cannot help but believe that he would lose his job. That's because ultimately the citizens of his community hold him responsible for the disposition of his weapon. I don't want civilian gun owners to have to pay a price in the same circumstance, but I want them to act like they would.