I don’t know about you, but it seems to be that just about everything here but New Hampshire’s gun laws were to be blame:
Markoff was able to get an affidavit of residency at the Nashua city clerk’s office, using the driver’s license with another man’s name and photograph, the paper reports. Deputy City Clerk Patricia Piecuch told the Globe the city doesn’t require people to provide evidence to prove their residency – the affidavit is signed under penalty of perjury – but the city has since modified its forms to state that the affidavits should be used as proof of residency only for motor vehicle registrations or driver’s license applications.
And yet the mother of the murder victim in this case still says the gun store was negligent, and has been gathering information for a lawsuit. It should be noted that PLCAA does not specifically preempt negligence suits, though it’s hard for me to see how it would prevail, given the guy was sporting fake identity and a perjured residency affidavit. Sometimes I think there’s hardly anything more dangerous to freedom than other people’s misplaced grief.
Strong emotion pushes aside logical analysis. “Someone” must pay, and Markoff took the cheap way out. The gun store is the wiping boy here.
There’s a classic Bloom County county comic strip that gives the logical analysis. The lawyer in the strip has been assaulted (while taking a picture of Sean Penn). His reasoning on the suit goes like this:
1, Sue the person who already severely injured me? No, he might do it agin.
2. Sue my sidekick who ran away at the first sign of trouble? No, he doesn’t have any money.
3. Sue the company that made the cameras? YES! They have oodles of money.
I am betting the attorney of the mother had a similar line of reasoning when suing the gun store. The actual person responsible has no money. The government agencies whose background check was supposed to stop the purchase can easily afford to defend themselves. So, he goes after the people who have the money to pay, but not enough to defend themselves easily.
I have a friend who is an attorney. She says she has some ethics, so she does criminal and family law only.
The corrections.com article at the link above mentioned that the mother of the craigslist killer’s victim wants to sue the Marriot-chain hotel where the murder occurred in addition to the gun shop in New Hampshire that sold the firearm.
This alone tells me that both the mother and her lawyer are desperately grasping at straws. Although the Marriot hotel chain has “oodles of money” like Tim Covington referred to in his post at #2 above, I really doubt that the mother and her lawyer are going to get an award or settlement of any amount.
There would have had to have been airport-style TSA security checkpoints at this Marriot-chain hotel to prevent the murder from taking place in the hotel room in question, and any hotel set up like would simply never be able to turn a profit. People would just stay somewhere else.
The craigslist killer was also a well-dressed preppy type when he entered the hotel and committed this murder, so it’s laughable to suggest that somebody at the front desk should have known better to confront him.
Furthermore, the victim of the craigslist killer was a prostitute when it comes right down to it, not an “erotic masseuse” as the corrections.com article at the link above referred to her as, and prostitutes have been getting murdered by their clients for as long as there has been prostitution itself.
This mother seems to me as just another one of those lower-income types who would never pass up an opportunity to play the lawsuit lottery no matter how weak the legal claim was. She just needs to face facts and reality instead, and move on with her life.
Don’t expect any of those NH gun laws to get tightened up any time soon. We don’t take too kindly to crazy talk like that.
:) :) :)