Milwaukee gun shop must pay ~$6 million to cops wounded by gun bought there

[HoughMade]

prisoners brings, and occasionally win, lawsuits for the violation of their civil rights, so there is no bright line that prisoners give up their constitutional rights. However, it is understood that restrictions on certain of their constitutional rights are appropriate given their situation. Prisoners didn't have the right to guns in prison when the 2d Amendment was proposed, debated or ratified and no one at the time believed that "the right to keep and bear arms" encompassed a right to have them in prison. The "right to keep and bear arms" is the right as it was known when it it was added to the Constitution.

 

[jamil]

How does an LGS making a sale of a firearm constitute "raising the odds of people being hurt"? What specific knowledge did the LGS have that would lead him reasonably to believe that selling a firearm to a specific purchaser would lead to people being hurt?

This is where I'm struggling. I get where the LGS potentially incurred some criminal liability, by conducting what he reasonably would conclude to be an illegal straw purchase. But that just means that the LGS would reasonably conclude that the firearm would be possessed by a "prohibited person". But there's a pretty far leap from "knowingly selling to a prohibited person via straw purchase" and "reasonably knowing that the specific prohibited person would use the specific firearm to harm someone".

There's the "common sense"/intuition perspective, and then there's the due process perspective. It is the latter that gives me pause.

I tend to agree that the concept of "prohibited person" should be regarded as unconstitutional. But it is what it is.

But this has a "common sense"/intuitive resolution. I think someone mentioned the form looked heavily edited. Notwithstanding the existence of the form itself depends on the legitimacy of the concept of "prohibited persons", this has the appearance that the sale could not have legally continued with the original selections on the form. I don't know who made the corrections. Was the form was filled out and then corrected by the buyer? Did the clerk inform the buyer that the sale couldn't continue with the original selections, and prompted the buyer to "corrected" them? Did the clerk edit the form himself?

This is a civil case and those are legitimate questions to ask. Regardless of the criminal law supporting the idea of "prohibited persons", can a gun shop be responsible for putting a gun in the hands of someone who used it to murder? I think in narrow circumstances, the answer is yes. And I think the form, along with the video evidence, and the history of guns used in murders coming from that shop, provides some evidence that the gun store owner was a douche bag who didn't give a flying **** who he sold guns to.

Shouldn't a person be held liable for their responsibility in how they've exercised their rights?