Minnesota has been a common topic around here lately, which isn't surprising after Minneapolis. However, while a lot of stupid burst forth after that tragedy, there's a long history of anti-gun stupidity coming out of the Land of a Thousand Lakes.
One such example is a lawsuit against the Fleet Farms store chain, where Minnesota Attorney General Larry Ellison alleges that the company willfully sold guns illegally.
Now, there's been no sign that the ATF has taken any action that I'm aware of, which is who should be handling a case like that, but Ellison is doing it via this lawsuit, and now he just got some good news.
A lawsuit filed by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison alleging Fleet Farm negligently sold firearms and other accusations tied to gun trafficking will proceed to trial, court documents filed Wednesday show.
According to the 2022 civil lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court of Minnesota, Fleet Farm stores sold 37 guns to two individuals — Jerome Horton and Sarah Elwood — between 2020 and 2021. Elwood and Horton have since been arrested and charged. Ellison said shortly after filing the lawsuit that the company should have known they were being resold.
The state in the lawsuit accused Fleet Farm of public nuisance, aiding and abetting, negligent entrustment, negligence, negligence per se and violating the Minnesota Gun Control Act.
A judge on Wednesday ruled that the court will give judgment on aiding and abetting, negligent entrustment and "on certain firearm transactions" in connection with the alleged violation of the Minnesota Gun Control Act prior to a trial.
Now, this is troubling, in part because we haven't seen any evidence that Fleet Farms can or should have been aware of any illegal activity following the purchases.
The one example given was a gun that was used in a so-called mass shooting, but that gun had been traded 24 times before it was put in the hands of the shooter. But there's really nothing here that suggests Fleet Farms was or reasonably should have been aware of what was going on.
And that matters, because just selling the firearms isn't grounds for being held liable for what someone else did with them. If they didn't signal these were straw purchases in some way, then how is the salesperson supposed to know?
The thing is, Ellison and his fellow gun grabbers want to file lawsuits against people who did nothing wrong simply because they sold guns that were later used in something awful.
This is nothing new.
However, the way this particular lawsuit is framed--that Fleet Farms did something illegal by selling the guns--allows the lawsuit to bypass the Protection of Lawful Commerce of Arms Act protections. Those protections don't apply when the accusations involve illegal practices.
Which is why the lawsuit is proceeding.
However, that doesn't mean they'll win. Nothing that's happened here, so far as I can see from the reports, actually suggests that this is advancing simply because of the merits of the case.
It's a nuisance lawsuit, an attempt to make it too costly to sell firearms in Minnesota, in hopes that gun dealers will get scared away simply because they can't guarantee someone buying a gun isn't going to do something awful later on.
It's an assault on the Second Amendment, not because there's some obligation to arm criminals, but because it's not really about them at all. It's never been about the bad guys.
They just want to make it as difficult as possible for regular Americans to buy guns. They like it when criminals get guns because that justifies literally every action they want to take. Criminals aren't the target, after all. It's us.
And attacking Fleet Farm like this is really just part of that, at least in my opinion.
They're a big enough enterprise where punishing them for selling guns might make a difference, but too small to launch a legal fight like a Walmart or someone nearly as big.
It's calculated, and I think we all know it.
Hopefully, the court will recognize that when it ends up at trial. Unfortunately, there didn't seem to be enough grounds to dismiss it just yet, though we can hope the trial judge finds some.
