The Los Angeles Times reports that a federal appeals court panel ruled today that firearms manufacturers and sellers can’t be held criminally liable for criminal misuse of their products.
The 2-1 decision, handed down by three Democratic appointees to the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals, ended a decade-long battle that started when Buford O. Furrow Jr., a white supremacist, went on a shooting rampage at a Granada Hills Jewish community center in 1999.
The lawsuit, which sought to hold Georgia-based Glock Inc., a Seattle-area gun dealer and a Chinese manufacturer liable for negligence, was filed by the mother of a man fatally shot in the incident, along with the families of five others wounded.
In making its ruling, the panel upheld the consitutionality of a 2005 federal law that retroactively shielded gun makers and distributors from responsibility for criminal acts involving properly functioning firearms.
