There might be hope for Remington if they choose to fight it
I read Miguel’s post:
Dear Remington: You can never satisfy them by conceding. Prepared to be reamed again.
And he very well may be right.
My comment to his post was: Remington paid the Dane geld, now they will never get rid of the Dane.
But then I remembered Gendron wrote about the Bushmaster in his Manifesto.
Here is some selected text on the subject:
I’m still taking the shooter’s manifesto at face value.
The shooter makes it crystal clear that he selected a pre-Remington Bushmaster rifle, and how much he hates Remington/Freedom Group Bushmaster rifles and thinks they are shit-tier rifles.
He said he chose the worse rifle for the job and it was the “cucked” version that was ban-compliant.
He also acknowledged that his selection was specifically to bait the media.
The Sandy Hook lawsuit was a travesty of justice.
To get around the PLCAA, the suit went after Bushmaster’s advertising.
They argued that Bushmaster advertised its rifle in such a way as to encourage killing with the tactical “assaultive” character of the rifle.
Considering that Lanza did not buy his rifle, but stole it from his mother after murdering her, the entirety of the argument was fallacious.
I am not a lawyer, so this this just my opinion, but:
Rem Arms/Bushmaster that exists today is two companies removed from the Bushmaster that made the rifle used by Gendron.
Gendron was explicit in not selecting a Remington/Rem Arms Bushmaster because of how bad they were.
He explicitly stated that he hated that he bought a “cucked” ban complaint rifle and had to modify it illegally to be acceptable.
So if Josh Kosoff tries and piggybacks this lawsuit on his Sandy Hook lawsuit, which is why he was consulted, I think Remington/Rem Arms has argument they their rifle was specifically not selected because the shooter hated it for its less than adequate performance, negating the entire argument made against Bushmaster in the Sandy Hook suit.
I also think that Bushmaster might have a counter suit potential against the media. The argument being that the media’s vilification of Bushmaster has turned their brand into something akin to an attractive nuisance. That people with ill intent will seek out Bushmaster rifles and do harm with them to bait the media.
It’s like the streakers at professional sports games. When the cameras followed the streakers and the commentators talked about them they would have more streakers.
Then sports networks changed and cut to commercial as soon as a streaker took the field and never talked about them, it stopped.
The incessant coverage of mass shooters and the model and/or brand that they used creates the same phenomenon. Bad people will model their actions to maximize media coverage.
The media is more liable for this than the gun makers are.
Now I know the comments in this post are going to be full of “everything you say is irrelevant because New York is just as Leftist as Connecticut and the doesn’t matter anymore because the Left will bend and break every law they can to accomplish their goals.”
And cynical me agrees with but, but I have to hold out some hope that the law will prevail.
We’ll have to see how this goes but the shooter’s own manifesto should be enough to automatically dismiss any lawsuit against Remington/Rem Arms if they choose to fight it.