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.

Tags: 1995 granada hills shooting, buford o. furrow, criminal liability, granada hills, gun makers, jewish community center, jr., no criminal liability for gun makers, white supremacist

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