I stopped by the Halloween store this afternoon to pick up some items for my costume, and I overheard a phone conversation between the store manager and Halloween store HQ. The manager was being told to remove all toy guns from the shelves because they are against the law.
Unbelievable.
Friday, October 12, 2007
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5 comments:
The saddest part is that it's really not unbelievable.
I bet that store carries copies of the Constitution with the Second Amendment censored out, since that is illegal too.
Gun makers were being sued for making "Saturday Night Specials," cheap guns that are often used in holdups by common criminals. This prompted the Republican controlled congress to pass the below mentioned law in 2005 forbidding those "frivolous" lawsuits.
Toy guns are often so realistic these days that it's hard to tell them from the real McCoy. A real gun without the bullets might as well be a toy gun, right? You can effectively rob a 7-11 with a toy gun, I'm sure. So, shouldn't toy gun manufactures be exempt from frivolous lawsuits as well? If I pull a toy pistol out of my pocket and start shooting off blanks at a birthday party and some old person with a pacemaker has a heart attack as a result should the maker of the pacemaker be held responsible? Should the maker of the toy gun be held responsible? What if the gun is an edible lollipop or vibrating sex toy - should the candy maker be held to account for making a lickable yet lethal cinnamon-flavoured non-weapon?
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"House Passes Bill Protecting Gun Makers from Lawsuits
In a 283-144 vote, the U.S. House of Representatives has given the final approval of Congress to a controversial bill giving U.S. gun makers broad protection from civil lawsuits.
The "Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act" prohibits civil lawsuits from being filed against manufacturers or sellers of firearms, ammunition, or components of a firearm for damages resulting from the "criminal or unlawful misuse of a firearm." The bill is intended to address a growing number of active and pending lawsuits brought by individuals and cities against gun makers whose products were used in the commission of violent crimes."
don't mess w/ texas --
I don't know where you get the idea that toy guns are so realistic. Every toy gun I've seen has either a dayglo pink or dayglo orange plastic piece glued to the end of the muzzle. Nobody in his right mind would believe that they're real.
In your hypothetical, it seems to me that, perhaps, YOU should be held responsible, not the company who made the toy. What if it wasn't a toy gun, but just your car backfiring? Would you hold GM responsible? What if somebody turned on the TV at the precise second of the gunfight in the movie? Do you hold RCA responsible for making a TV capable of scaring an old person? Or is it CBS for broadcasting the movie? Or maybe Universal Studios for making the movie?
The lawsuits were fivolous because they had no reasonable basis in law. Why hold the gun manufacturer responsible because a gun it produced was used in a killing when you don't also hold the knife maker responsible or the maker of a rope or a candlestick (or any of the other weapons in "Clue")?
Probably you just over heard it wrong and the manager said "colt guns should be taken off the shelves". Which makes sense because guns are dangerous if they don't go really well with your outfit.
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