The Texas Supreme Court recently dismissed multiple 2017 lawsuits regarding a mass shooting at a Sutherland Springs Church. The families of the survivors filed a suit against the retailer who sold the rifle. They said that the retailer conducted a background check on a dishonorably charged Air Force member Devin Kelley who entered First Baptist Church and gunned down 26 people.
While Kelley had been found guilty of assaulting his wife and stepson and was dishonorably discharged from service in 2012, Air Force officials failed to report the conviction to the FBI background check system. Survivors of the families argued that under the federal Gun Control Act the weapon would’ve had to fully comply with the laws of Texas, where the state of the sale was, and Colorado, where Kelley resided. They said that the purchase of the weapon violated federal law.
But Justice Debra H. Lehrmann argued that the sale was legal because federal law only applies to the sale of firearms, not components.
“Indeed, although the transaction between Academy and Kelley on April 7, 2016, encompassed the sale of two Magpul large-capacity magazines — one packaged as a stand-alone product and one packaged with the Ruger AR-556 rifle — the plaintiffs do not contend that the sale of the stand-alone magazine along with the rifle rendered the transaction unlawful even though it could not have taken place legally in Colorado,” Justice Lehrmann wrote.
The shooting was decried as the worst in Texas history at the time and Sen. John Cornyn addressed the National Instant Criminal Background Check System shortly after.
The case emphasized to Americans that the database is only as good as the information it receives. We’ve seen many failures in the past with the FBI supposedly investigating shooters they were warned about, like the Parkland shooting as a result of Obama’s policy not to record minority criminal activity in High School.
Yet the Biden Administration continues to point the finger at the fault of the gun manufacturer or seller. This is a failure from one federal agency to the next, not the selling and transfer of guns.
And now, President Biden has announced three major gun control initiatives he wants to pursue including eliminating immunity for gun manufacturers and putting a ban on so-called “assault weapons” and high-capacity magazines.
During an April speech, he even claimed that gun manufacturers are the only billion-dollar industry that can’t be sued. Second Amendment advocates have argued that that subjecting gun manufacturers and firearms dealers to lawsuits repeal legal protection for everyone in the industry.
This would be like suing a vehicle manufacturer because someone was killed by a drunk driver. It’s a waste of court costs and legal fees to achieve unconstitutional goals against the 2nd Amendment.
