Connecticut Judge Barbara Bellis refused to comply with federal law last week, which compels her to toss out a frivolous lawsuit filed by a small group of Sandy Hook families who are seeking to make selling the most popular rifle sold in the United States illegal.

She’s now set a trial date for this lie-filed suit.

Yesterday a Connecticut judge set a trial date of April 3, 2018, for a lawsuit against the manufacturer, distributor, and dealer who supplied the Bushmaster XM15-E2S used in the 2012 massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Newtown. In the meantime, the plaintiffs—who include the families of nine people murdered at the school, plus a survivor of the attack—can proceed with discovery. It’s not exactly clear what they hope to find, since the case hinges not on facts but on the way they’re spun. The plaintiffs argue that selling the Bushmaster XM15-E2S and other AR-15-style rifles to the general public qualifies as “negligent entrustment,” because such “assault weapons” have “no legitimate civilian purpose.”

“No legitimate civilian purpose?”

Reality disagrees.

Citizen demand in particular for AR-15 pattern rifles is especially high in recent years, for the most practical of reasons.

AR-15 rifles are very modular in nature. Depending on the needs and desires of the owner, an AR-15 can be set up in a wide range of configurations.

AR-15-style rifles are common among competition shooters, using iron sights or optics depending upon the kind of competition.

Others prefer a scoped AR-15 with a heavy barrel for medium-to-long range target shooting or small game hunting.

AR-15 variants are increasingly common in medium and large game hunting as well, as long as long-range target shooting.

AR-15s are also commonly chosen as self-defense/home-defense firearms, and many professional firearms instructors and coaches recommend the AR-15 because it offers low recoil, a standard-capacity 20-0r 30-round magazine, and can be used with bullets that fragment more readily and pose less of a risk of over-penetration compared to most common defensive pistol and shotgun cartridges.

And of course, the AR-15 is well-known as the “modern musket,” particularly well-suited above all other firearms for the purpose of contemporary militia use.

When the Founding Fathers spoke of a “well-regulated” militia, they did not mean “regulations” as in restrictions. They clearly used the then-common term “well-regulated” to mean something “in a state of proper working order.”

In the late 20th Century and early 21st Century, no other firearm better helps the modern unorganized militia (literally, everyone nor currently serving who could be drafted to serve or volunteer in military or militia service) than the AR-15.

AR-15s share a great degree of parts commonality with real assault rifles (military M4 carbines and M16s capable that can select between one shot per trigger pull and burst modes or fully automatic fire), including using the same magazines and 5.56 NATO ammunition, so that modern militamen can bring their own firearms if needed, and use spare parts, magazines, and ammunition from government stockpiles as needed.

The five million (or more) AR-15s in civilian hands more than doubles the number of those belonging to the U.S. government in the military and in federal law enforcement… and that is perhaps the real reason entities such as the Democrat Party and their allies in the mainstream media are so intent on targeting them with bans and restrictions, even though rifles of all kinds have been used in less than 300 homicides a year—a number that declines steadily, I must add—in a nation of 320 million.

Reality, honesty, and facts have nothing to do with this lawsuit, of course.

If it did, Judge Bellis would have recognized the many obvious falsehoods made in the plaintiffs’ absurd case, which is replete with spin and hyperbole, and what appears to be intentional deception (or ignorance verging on gross incompetence) by the lawyers bringing the case.

Judge Barbara Bellis, however, doesn’t seem to care.

My concern is that if Bellis cares so little for law, facts, and reason, that this activist judge find a way to ensure that Bushmaster and Remington will be found guilty, opening the door to sue any manufacturer for any firearm, for any reason, destroying the firearms manufacturing industry in the United States, and rendering the Second Amendment moot.