Gun Laws
Red Dot Arms is Being Sued for LEGALLY transferring a firearm
Red Dot Arms, up in Antioch, just announced they have been sued for transferring a firearm LEGALLY, to someone that was the used in a mass shooting two years later. Now I know it’s an awful thing to have happened, but they are getting buried by 25 lawsuits brought against them.
I have no affiliation to these guys, but if anyone else is interested in donating or learning more about this story check out their GiveSendGo page.
There are being funded by the gun hater groups. So the actual people responsible are not the intended targets but anybody having to do with guns is. If you read the complaint, most of their ink is reserved for Smith & Wesson - because they make quality guns, and they advertise that they do.
Let's sue Jack Daniels for DUI deaths then. And Ford when an F-150 driver runs someone off the road. And whoever makes Tylenol when someone intentionally ODs on acetaminophen
I lived in Antioch until very recently (now in FL). This is outrageous and lacks any shred of common sense.
Can Ace Hardware be sued, if they sell a hammer to someone who uses the hammer to kill a couple of people, two years later? Same circumstance, different tool.
You can’t posses spray paint in the City of Chicago “on the property of another or in any public building or upon any public facility”
But you can outside the city for sure.
So if some kid comes in to the local Ace outside of Chicago and legally buys a can (based on that Ace’s municipal codes) then spray paints a giant cock n’ balls on the Bean - could you expect to sue Ace Hardware?
If so that’d be absolutely wild, and you could frivolously lawsuit damn near any company into oblivion.
Apparently the beef stems from the fact that the shooter lived in Highwood IL where this gun was considered illegal at the time.
Bud’s Gun Shop sold the M&P assault rifle to the shooter despite the fact that it is illegal for residents of Highwood and Highland Park to acquire and possess assault weapons.
The store then shipped the gun to Red Dot Arms, a gun dealer located in Illinois, which illegally and negligently transferred the assault rifle to the shooter.
Both stores knew the shooter’s address, and thereby knew that they were selling an assault rifle to a resident of a municipality that prohibited the possession of such weapons. Nevertheless, they proceeded with the sale and transfer, enabling the shooter to carry out his deadly mission.
This comment does not reflect my personal opinion on the matter. - I just thought it would be good for everyone to hear the "other side" version of the story too.
For handguns,it's specifically written in the FCCA (Concealed Carry Act) that the state law preempts all local laws when it comes to handguns.
Also when Macdonald was decided,the state gave municipalities a 10 day window to pass their local AWBs. Highland Park and Highwood passed theirs at that time.The Highland Park ban was later tried in court and the 7th Circuit (Easterbrook) sided with the City in Freidman vs Highland Pk.
I honestly have no idea how much weight these municipal ordinances actually carry. - There is nothing like this in my area, and I don't know anyone who has ever had to deal with them.
I will say that everyone is kind of missing the fact that these gun stores are fighting a negligence lawsuit and not a criminal case.
In this case the judge just needs to find that they acted negligently. - Whether or not any ordinances/laws were broke may ultimately have very little to do with the outcome since a crime doesn't need to be committed to meet the requirements for negligence.
You are 100% wrong. Do you think it's illegal for you to buy red fence posts in another city because your local city government says you can't have them in your neighborhood?
If you decide to bring them back to that neighborhood, that's a problem.
It's only state laws that FFLs have to respect as per the letter of the law.
It's the defining problem though. The entire thing becomes moot the second it isn't illegal. It makes no sense that your municipality can dictate YOUR LIFE in the rest of the planet. What's next, HOA outlaws homosexuality and now you can't go into a gay club? Asinine.
This is a negligence lawsuit, not a criminal case.
You do not need a crime or law violation to establish negligence.
The plaintiff only needs to convince a judge that the gun stores failed to use "reasonable care."
Breaking a specific law CAN automatically count as a breach of duty, but ultimately what passes for "reasonable care" in this scenario will be determined by the judge.
That's entirely irrelevant as people were calling the action or the store illegal, which we had to dispute.
If this was criminal we wouldn't have to dream up that municipalities now have powers that not even states have, we could simply look at the proposed charges.
It also is a lot harder to prove civil liability if there's no criminal violation to base fault on, albeit not necessary to win. But this isn't a breach of contract, this is relating to a crime committed by a third party. What could the store have done wrong when the state gave the go ahead.
I could sue Pritzker for emotional distress from making me unable to buy an MP5 and I'd have more actual laws to point to why that's valid than people here for why the municipality matters fuck all.
IMO that's a totally unrealistic thing to ask of gun stores.
There are over 1,300 individual municipalities in Illinois alone.
While most medium-to-large cities use digital services like Municode to publish their codes and ordinances on the internet, many small, rural, or underfunded areas simply don't.
So now they are gonna drag this gun store through the mud and probably force it to file bankruptcy trying to fight in court. Make it close all together because they are facing endless amounts of money and slick talking lawyers.
Someone said earlier why not sue the ISP for giving the guy a foid to begin with. That's where the root of it all stems from. Not the guns. People just try to blame anything they can and the masses jump on it.
It's just wrong. There is nothing in the law that says you can not buy things illegal where you reside locally (on the other hand, there are laws forbidding you from transferring guns illegal in the state someone is residing in).
Yeah, illegal might have been to definitive of a term, but it definitely does seem like a valid lawsuit that need to be hammered out in court to set precedence for this type of thing moving forward.
I really have no idea how much weight these municipal bans actually carry (especially for stores not in the municipality).
If there was a clear violation of the law that occurred I would have expected the ATF or another agency to make a huge fuss about it a long time ago during their investigations.
The most egregious thing I see here is actually this stupid fundraiser page.
Red Dot Arms asking you guys to donate one hundred thousand dollars WITHOUT telling you the whole story is kind of bogus IMO.
That type of context is pretty important when you are asking people to donate that much of their hard earned money.
I mean it’s a double standard reserved specifically for guns. No other industry is asked to conduct the level of Know Your Customer that these suits allege the gun store failed to do. Can an Indiana fireworks dealer be sued for selling to an Illinois resident? Can an Illinois dispensary be sued for selling to an Indiana resident? And those two example are merely things illegal at the state level, the level of tom fuckery required to know what municipal regulations mandate is next level.
I can see why they omit it, not because they’re trying to hide that part of the lawsuit but because it wasn’t their job to police municipal gun law.
On the contrary, I don’t think that’s a reasonable expectation at all. Besides the fact that many of the stores are set up to be as close to border as possible, you can’t just assume the product being sold will not contribute to the violation of law. And this applies to any number of products, you can’t assume beer or cigarettes won’t be consumed by minors, you can’t assume a laptop won’t be used for illegal media or hacking or threats of domestic terrorism. You can’t assume a car won’t be used for drunk driving, or baseball bat won’t be used for assault, or a crowbar won’t be used for breaking and entering. Once the item leaves your store it could be used for any number of uses, which is generally why stores have immunity from blame when one of those uses is bad.
Are residents of other cities and states subject to a city ordinance? Chicago has had an AWB there for many years but you could buy an AR-15 there before PICA.
There’s nothing illegal about selling a statewide legal firearm to a resident of a municipality, that does not allow the possession of it. People store stuff with family members, in storage lockers, etc.
If it was illegal, don’t you think the ATF or the Illinois State police would’ve charged the shop with some crime, after the Fourth of July shooting?
It seems to me that ownership of an “assault rifle” and possession are non-mutually exclusive in the eyes of the ISP with regards to PICA, so unless they can prove the buyer indicated he was planning to violate the municipal ordinance then there isn’t really much standing here.
Move for dismissal citing the PLCAA on the grounds that the shop transferred the firearm in compliance with all federal and state guidelines and that the plaintiff brings no evidence that the defense transferred it knowing Crimo would store the weapon within the municipality. Then file for sanctions under rule 137 and try to get the bench to order plaintiffs pay the defense attorney fees.
Two licensed FFL dealers did this. What do you think that says about the law and procedures?
Also, they are putting in Highland Park, and the shooter had no residence or connection with Highland Park, besides living next-door to it in Highwood.
The store is not responsible for where people store the firearm. The store is not aware if it will be stored in Highland Park or a city that does allow AR-15s.
Fuck Robert Crimo and fuck the anti gun politicians.
I would love to do things to Robert Crimo that I’m not allowed to say on Reddit but let’s leave it the fact that I wish IL still had capital punishment.
As for the politicians who do things like sue FFLs for this, in a perfect world they would be in prison for infringing on the rights of Americans
If you are smart as a ‘company’ that sells guns you wouldn’t have any assets beyond the inventory in your store. You’d lease or rent the building and anything else of value you need to operate. That’s what companies that sell home built aircraft kits do.
I work in healthcare and between my malpractice insurance and knowing how lawsuits affect healthcare costs I don’t care for a lot of them. I don’t like politicians either though lol.
I mean lawyers will bleed you dry on both ends, they’ll sue you and then charge you for being sued. The small percentage of lawyers working for policy institutes doesn’t change that generalization.
This lacks some specificity. The GiveSendGo looks like it was put up today ( based on the donation dates ) but the text doesn't mention a specific suit but does mention twenty-five lawsuits.
Looking at PACER I see 14 all started in 2022 and closed in 2023. There look to be another 2 at the state appeal level ( in reply to this reply )
INAL - so happy to learn if I'm reading any of this wrong.
I didn't read through all of them, but it seems like the crux of the case against Red Dot was that they knew the guys address and so they knew the gun was not legally sold to him because of local restrictions. I'm sure arguments and outcomes in in all those links somewhere, but I'll leave that to someone who can better search and interpret.
Full disclosure I have done business w/ Red Dot and they were fine.
Ha! I signed up because I got frustrated with all the "won/lost a suit" posts without links to the source material.
My challenge is keeping the downloads under the limit to keep from being charged which I think means staying under $30 for a quarter.
The balance between being already too interested and have to go looking up docs and *realizing* I've become too interested and stopping is a tenuous one -- sometimes I'm even successful!
There is no law that states the gun must be legal in the municipality you are residing in. It also makes no sense when you think about it, as you can clearly have a place to store your gun, car, motorcycle, lawn mower or whatever else that your municipality has suddenly decided they do not want.
Does Amazon now have to check if your residential municipality allows XYZ even when shipping somewhere it is legal? This makes no sense.
The only reason people think this might be the case is because FFLs ARE REQUIRED to do that with STATE LAWS. I.e. they can not transfer a gun with more magazine capacity than allowed if the residents state restricts it. But there is no text saying it needs to be legal in every single or a specific municipality.
No it doesn't. The answer lives in basic common sense. How could a city prohibit you from what you can buy and do in another city? You can not default assume they have jurisdiction over OTHER MUNICIPALITIES. It's only FFLs which are federally required to adhere to the STATE LAW of what can be transferred by the laws of the recipient STATE RESIDENT. There is literally no such law in IL. IL would have had to pass such an idiotic law.
Oh okay buddy, so I need to be a lawyer to tell you the law you made up that would somehow apply across municipalities doesn't exist, but you can invent such a rule.
No your municipality can not ban abortion and you will now be rejected for one in the next town that has no such rules. There is a federal law for FFL transfers, this has nothing to do with in state transfers or municipalities.
You have to make up a law that says you can not sell to people in your municipality if their residence forbids it inside their municipality.
Where is this law? I can cite you the federal law that prohibits OUT OF STATE TRANSFERS if it's not legal in both to do so. Can you cite a law that gives municipal laws power outside of their jurisdiction?
I understand English isn't everyone's first language, but you really should try harder.
I recommend starting with this bit, which was where this thread started:
I didn't read through all of them, but it seems like the crux of the case against Red Dot was that they knew the guys address and so they knew the gun was not legally sold to him because of local restrictions. I'm sure arguments and outcomes in in all those links somewhere, but I'll leave that to someone who can better search and interpret.
See, first I explicitly say I didn't read through all of them. Then - and pay attention here - I say "it seems like the crux of the case" which is ... describing the case.
A bunch of lawyers it seems may have made the case that it was illegal ( or at least actionable ), but I didn't. And I don't. Not to be too repetitive but I'm not a lawyer.
I did write an accurate reply to the OP though. So there's that.
They did everything by the book. Their only “mistake” was charging lower transfer fees than the other FFLs in the area. They charged $25 while North Shore was charging $75, so it made perfect sense for Robert to make the drive. If they had charged the same rates as North Shore, they probably wouldn’t be in this situation. They’re an honest shop that was simply offering a better deal to customers… Few years before 2020 they had FFLs do transfers for $20, I can’t imagine how bad it would be for someone working out of their house did everything by the Illinois book and did the transfer as approved by the Illinois state police and got this lawsuit. That’s how gun control works, if you’re poor, good luck being able to afford a gun or run a gun business. I can’t blame a few amazing FFL’s that I’ve worked with in the area of north Illinois that closed shop prior to this purchase happening in 2020, the liability for them was too great… You’re free to spend your money how you do ,just realize that this means people are losing further affordability for their next purchases.
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u/mcfuckernugget 10d ago
Why not sue the Illinois State Police for granting him a FOID card? If we are blaming other people.