AndyS
AndyS's JournalRemington offers $33 million to Sandy Hook Elementary School families
Documents filed in Superior Court in Waterbury state that Remington is offering to “to settle all claims inclusive of any fees and costs on behalf of all Defendants.” The offer, which totals nearly $33 million, is the first settlement offer from the manufacturer of the gun used to kill 20 school children.
Josh Koskoff, a lawyer for the families, said the offer was from two of the four insurance companies that did business with Remington, which is bankrupt. He praised two of the insurers, Ironshore and James River, “for now realizing that promoting the use of AR-15s as weapons of war to civilians is indefensible”
“Since this case was filed in 2014, the families’ focus has been on preventing the next Sandy Hook. An important part of that goal has been showing banks and insurers that companies that sell assault weapons to civilians are fraught with financial risk,’' Koskoff said in a statement.
https://www.courant.com/news/connecticut/hc-news-remington-sandy-hook-families-settlement-offer-20210727-4rgroxc7yjbs7phj7ibgwbsq6q-story.html
Short article, no more at link.
I do not speak for the families and have no 'inside information' but I will be surprised if the families accept the offer.
This isn't about damages. It isn't about punishing only Remington. It's about losing a child and the hole in the heart that leaves.
The purpose is to expose the marketing of guns to vulnerable people by making them essential to masculinity and creating fear. The purpose is to have the CEOs of every gun manufacturer before Congress giving testimony just like the Tabaco industry. The purpose is to lay bare the callous nature of an industry that spreads death and anguish for the sake of sales and profit.
I wish them well and God speed.
She is 8 years old.
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One of humanity’s nobler attributes is its adaptability. To be human, after all, is to learn, often by bitter experience, that “normal” can change in an eyeblink of time. So surviving and thriving require an ability to adjust to whatever the new normal might be.
. . .
But sometimes, maybe we should be more maladjusted. Sometimes, adapting oneself to the new circumstance is less a hopeful sign of resilience than a troubling sign of collective failure. “I always am expecting something to happen,” she said.
She is 8 years old.
Eight-year-olds should not have to go about always expecting something to happen. That this one does — that a 7-year-old in South Carolina was diagnosed with PTSD after a shooting there, that a 6-year-old in D.C. was shot and killed the night before the ballpark incident — is an indictment of this country. It is a rebuke of every pundit and gun-lobby functionary who ever sold mass terror as freedom, of every lawmaker who ever accepted NRA blood money in exchange for conscience, of every voter who voted for the politician who promised more guns in more places, of every individual who fires a gun as a show of cheap courage and counterfeit toughness, of all our thoughts and prayers and deepest condolences, of all our words and promises and newspaper columns and court cases and debates and tweets and resolve and pain.
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https://digital.olivesoftware.com/olive/ODN/HoustonChronicle/shared/ShowArticle.aspx?doc=HHC%2F2021%2F07%2F25&entity=Ar01902&sk=8FA66172&mode=text
What is wrong with us?
"We must never allow people to get away with murdering our children,"
said D.C. Mayor Muriel Bowser.
Yet, over the weekend there were 12 (count 'em, TWELVE) mass shootings leaving 11 dead and 49 injured.
We allow this to happen. The gun lobby isn't invincible. Politicians are more afraid of US than they are of losing contributions. We have votes. They only have money.
Even Republicans don't want to be shot or have their children taken from them. When will WE learn to USE our votes?
I get so tired of writing this stuff and weeping.
Maybe it's just me . . .
These two guns are what police to use in training.
This is a gun marketed by a popular manufacturer.
As are these. All real guns.
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These, on the other hand are non lethal bb guns marketed by toy makers and the likes of Daisy.
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Am I the only one that sees a problem here? Police are conditioned to see blue guns as harmless but gun makers provide blue guns to the public?
Shouldn't toys look like toys and guns look like guns to reduce the confusion out on the street?
Your unseen gun violence tax.
San Jose to make gun owners carry insurance, pay into public fundhttps://sanjosespotlight.com/san-jose-to-make-gun-owners-carry-insurance-pay-into-public-fund/
Oh noes! Gunners have their panties in a wad! Second amendment! God Given Right! My precious!
What could possibly drive government to do such a thing???? Might it be . . .
Sam Liccardo (@sliccardo), mayor, San Jose
Because of that considerable expense San Jose requires gun owners to have liability insurance on their guns and to pay into a fund to offset costs of gun violence. Of course gunners are apoplectic.
According to the GAO guns cost the US treasury roughly a $Billion a year. Every year. Why is it that all of you have to pay that tax even if you don't own a gun?
I own guns. I'm happy to carry my fair share of costs. My insurance will be relatively low because my guns are almost 100 years old, stored in a safe and ammunition stored separately. I think it would be more expensive if I owned a similar number of AR 15/AK 47s and Glocks but that's the nature of insurance underwriting. Probably be less if they were all smart guns with electronic safety features.
Why won't gun owners step up and take responsibility?
I bet the industry is more concerned about discovery . . . than it is about losing . . .
There is reason for hope in the fight against the gun industry and gun culture but it takes an achingly long time to see progress.
We all remember Sandy Hook. In 2014 they filed a lawsuit against Remington. It bounced from appeals court to appeals court until the Connecticut Supreme court ruled it can proceed. Seven years in the making.
In 2019 a San Diego Synagogue sued Smith and Wesson after one of their products was used to kill one and wound three in a shooting. This year courts ruled that the suit can proceed. Three years in the making.
However, the lawsuit that has gun makers shaking in their collective boots is Gary Indiana vs Glock, Smith & Wesson, and Beretta. The Gary suit alleges that the nation’s largest handgun manufacturers have turned a blind eye to the diversion of guns into the criminal market. They are seeking 25 years of marketing and sales information. The suit is now poised to move to discovery. In September a judge will decide if the manufacturers have to turn over that 25 years of communications, marketing strategy and information on gun trafficking.
“I bet the industry is more concerned about what might turn up in discovery than it is about losing the case in the long run,” said Adam Winkler, a professor of constitutional law at the University of California, Los Angeles, and the author of Gunfight: The Battle Over the Right to Bear Arms in America. “They’re fearful of the example of Big Tobacco, which wasn’t brought down by lawsuits for defective products, but rather by the reputational hit from tremendous amounts of discovery information that showed tobacco-makers were hiding evidence of the dangers of cigarettes.”
The gears of justice grind painfully slowly but there is a possibility that the entire gun industry will soon be ground between them.
Sandy hook families vs Remington 2014
https://www.business-humanrights.org/en/latest-news/gun-industry-lawsuit-re-sandy-hook-shooting-in-usa/
San Diego synagogue shooting 2019
https://apnews.com/article/business-religion-shootings-california-ca-state-wire-7cbfe50bf65d3e09a420768c4e46e982
Gary Indiana vs gun makers 1999
https://www.thetrace.org/2021/07/glock-smith-wesson-beretta-sued-indiana-plcaa-documents/
Yet more mind fuckery and mental masturbation.
So I'm in this discussion about real guns that look like toy guns and toy guns that look like real guns and the number of people that police shoot because of the confusion.
Think of it. Is that a toy that looks real or a real gun that looks like a toy or a . . . Ya' got a tenth of a second to decide.
So anyway the thread splits to those shot holding a replica gun and the children who would play with the real gun looking like a toy.
In come the gunners! So how do you explain away the people needlessly killed and the police officers saddled with the guilt of killing someone holding a toy?
The preferred way to diffuse the anguish of human life lost is to simply minimize it. “It's only a couple of dozen a year.” Really? Having a bb gun that looks like the real thing is more important than a couple of dozen dead people a year? Apparently so to gunners. But that's just the way gun violence is diminished in their own minds. Point out this set of deaths and it's only a few percentage points of the whole so not worth being concerned about. Dismiss this % and move to the next category and its % and before ya' know it all 40,000 dead and 150,000 injured are accounted for as not enough to spend time on. Voila! Gun violence dismissed!
They did the same with the possibility of a child playing with a real gun that looks like a brightly colored toy. Considering that between 40 & 50 TODDLERS under 4 shoot themselves or others every year what affect do you think the toy look-alike will have on those numbers? Answer? Almost nil. Not nil but almost nil. Not zero but close to 0 which means at least one and you're not prepared to limit it there. Again, not enough death to deprive a gunner of a brightly colored Glock that looks like a plastic toy.
Fun fact! Most toddler's injures are to themselves because their index fingers are too short to reach the trigger or too weak to pull it so they use their thumbs which turns the gun around. The gun is pointing at the child's chest or face when it fires.
So okay gunners, fair warning. File this heartless unfeeling argument right next to the one about deflection. I will call you out every time you attempt to use this molding pile of feces to justify your fetish. I will tell you in no uncertain terms that you've just admitted to all of DU that you could not give a shit about human life and the grief guns cause as long as no guns are harmed.
Just how greedy do you have to be?
One of these is a real gun, the other is not. Which is real?
If you guessed the second black picture you were wrong. Makes no difference really as both have caused the deaths of children and adults.
Gun manufacturers license their names, designs, and specifications to toy makers and collect fees for their use. More than 150 people (adult and child, remember Tamir Rice) have been killed by police while holding one of these replica guns. Of course, toy maker's aren't innocent either. I guess everyone wants to get in on making a buck off our insane gun culture.
On the other hand gun makers have co-opted major toy makers' brands. The brightly colored 'LEGO' gun is REAL, a custom covered Glock offered by a Utah company for anywhere from $550 to $750. From the company's website, “We have been building guns out of blocks for the last 30 years and wanted to flip the script to aggravate Mom.” Even after considerable backlash over the product it took a cease & desist order from LEGO to stop the sales.
As an aside, out of curiosity I bought the product shown in the second picture. Cost about $40. It is made of metal, has the same weight as the real Beretta and the slide kicks back when the trigger is pulled just like the gun it is patterned after. It fired standard BBs at about 400 feet per second, not fast enough to break the skin. I turned it in to the local Chief of police for use in training. I told him I was giving it to him because a number of kids had been shot by police while playing with one of them. His response? "Oh my God, if somebody brandished this I'd shoot 'em for sure."
There is no depth to which the gun industry won't go and no responsibility they won't shirk to make a buck.
Gunners accuse me of wanting to start a culture war. I say ya' goddam right I do, some cultures need to die so some people don't.
What is wrong with us?
How, on God's green earth, did we get HERE?
I was at a friend's hose watching retro TV. One Adam Twelve from the late '60s/early '70s was on. The two officers were wearing standard blue oxford shirt type uniforms and they carried handcuffs, a nightstick and a standard Issue .38 police special revolver. What we called a 'six shooter'.
Today's patrol officer often wears body armor and carries a tactical baton, taser, pepper spray, a semi auto gun with 15 round magazine, tactical flashlight and a window punch to break car windows. In the trunk is an AR-15 just in case.
What happened between that charming cop show and now? In a greatly simplified version, this happened . . .
The country was trending toward more urbanization and traditional hunting was going away as a marketplace for guns.
Then the NRA, an organization formed to promote gun safety and marksmanship, was overtaken in a coup by the gun industry. That shifted the organization's focus to self defense. Self defense requires a different kind of gun, one designed for lethality against human beings. These semi automatic guns had 10-15 round magazines that could be reloaded in seconds. New organizations formed; Shooting Sports Foundation, Gun Owners of America and a myriad of paramilitary 'militias'. A whole new gun industry and lobby came into existence.
At the same time, the AR-15 (the prototype for the military M-16) and the AK-47 (a semi auto version of Russia's military weapon) were introduced for civilian sales. The NRA fabricated a new name for these weapons of war; 'modern sporting rifles'.*
Then the gun industry launched a new marketing philosophy. Gone were the ads about the great outdoors and hunting for game, replaced with an emphasis on protection, military imagery and of course scantily clad young women with clothing in dis-array.
A brilliant marketing move. White America is afraid of the 'other' with a gun and feeling impotent. They buy guns. Now there are more guns to be afraid of so they buy more guns which means there are more people with guns to be afraid of so they buy MORE guns. And these guns are far more lethal by design than the old six shooter. Almost as good as tobacco: make an addictive product cool and build a loyal customer base.
This sparked an arms race. Civilians have this armament, so police need it too. Police have it so civilians think it's the preferred defense product. Now police have SWAT squads, MRAP military vehicles, snipers and wear camo with gas masks and look more like a deployment to a combat zone in a third world country than someone to serve and protect.
I guess it's the same old story. Follow the money.
* Gunners will deny that the 'modern sporting rifles' are military grade and say assault weapon is a made up word. That is utter bullshit. The AR-15 IS THE PROTOTYPE developed for a Pentagon request for quote to replace the M-14. The AK-47 available for sale is Identical to the AK-47 designed by Kalishnakov for the Soviet army sold in semi auto form for civilians. The term assault weapon was coined in WWII to describe smaller, high fire rate sub machine guns introduced by the German army. It was the term used by Eugene Stoner to describe his AR-15. Who better to name a gun than the one who designed it? Ask any gunner and they'll tell you there is no gun problem. Gun deaths are far fewer than in the '90s. Crime is at an all time low. Both are true and form the kernel of truth in which to wrap the lie. They ignore that since 2014 gun deaths have risen by as much as 20% per year. EVERY YEAR. And while overall crime is down, homicides are up dramatically in all major cities. So, to the gunners promulgating this line of propaganda, I say you're full of shit and you know it.
Sometimes I just get tired of the convoluted mind fuckery and mental masturbation.
When it comes to guns you have to admire the ability and diligence it takes to deflect from the subject at hand to some nebulous non relevant bullshitty other thing.
In the case of Sandy Hook families vs Remington for the slaughter of 20 six year old children and 6 of their care takers the gunners realized that it's kinda' hard to attack the parents. I mean, really. Your child has been riddled with bullets from a military grade weapon but somehow you, as a gunner, have to come up with a way to make their attempt at redress against a gun maker into something other than unending and unrelenting grief. That's a tough job, but by God as a gunner you're up to it!
So how do you distract from the fact that in five minutes 500 bullets were fired into the bodies of 26 little kids and their teachers? You make it about the greed of the lawyers representing the parents not about the atrocity, that's how. The gunner's answer is to TRY to elicit sympathy for the parents because the LAWYERS are abusing them by taking a frivolous case for the sake of running up huge legal bills that will accrue to the poor victims when they lose the hopeless case against the rights that God gave to guns. See, it isn't about guns and the misery they cause, it's about filthy lawyers!
This flies in the face of the FACT that the parents hired the attorneys, not the other way 'round. It denies the possibility of the attorneys taking the case on contingency which is not a part of public record. It denies all that is decent in humanity.
This is a specious, simplistic and cynical position to take and I will call you out on it every time you repeat this slimy pile of fetid offal propagated by an unfeeling uncaring industry and it's priests and acolytes.
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Gender: MaleHometown: Pelican Bay, TX 76020
Home country: United States
Current location: home
Member since: Thu Jan 20, 2005, 02:07 PM
Number of posts: 14,559
