Glock sells gun to cops, psycho shoots "non-whites", Glock gets sued?? [Ben]

Browsing the news today, I noticed the following lawsuit against firearms manufacturer, Glock: Click to download a large pdf of the lawsuit, or wait and I'll paraphrase some juicy bits. More palatable SFgate story available here. Basically, Glock sold a bunch of guns to a police department in Washington. Eventually, the fuzz traded the weapon in question to a gun dealer for an updated piece. Said dealer then sold the gun to some unprincipled fuck who sold it to a psycho white supremacist at a gun show without a background check. Aforementioned psycho then uses the glock to shoot up a Jewish community center and afterwards, probably not intending any irony, kills a Filipino mail carrier. Long story short, following a criminal trial with a guilty verdict, mail carrier’s family sues Glock, among others.

Now, no one is more anti-white supremacist and pro-minority mailman than me, and in the past I've even harbored some anti-gun sympathies (my conversion to a more libertarian stance on this issue is a story for another time), but some of the shit alleged in this lawsuit is straight up laughable. Examples:

1) "They contend that Glock guns are safe and appropriate for use by well trained elite offensive police forces, but are not appropriate for civilians or unskilled users."

Hahahaha. Whaaaa? They don't get into any more detail here, but I'd guess that the arguments in court will focus on the lack of an external safety and the ease of the trigger pull. I'm sure this combination was directly responsible for the original murderous rampage, but I'm not very familiar with the criminal proceedings. Judging by the guilty verdict, if the defense of "I, an untrained civilian, was just walking along and this unsafe weapon opened fire on those kikes and killed that monkey" was used, it wasn't very convincing. How could the safety of the firearm have any bearing on whether the manufacturer assumes responsibility for its use in a murder?

2) "Plaintiffs also allege that the defendants intentionally produced more firearms than the legitimate market demands with the intent of marketing their firearms to illegal purchasers who buy guns on the secondary market... In addition, Glock and its distributors encourage police departments to make trade-ins earlier than necessary or originally planned so that they can sell more firearms to the police and sell the former police guns at a mark-up on the civilian market. Glock knows that by over-saturating the market with guns, the guns will go to the secondary markets that serve illegal purchasers."

Okay, even looking past the implication that the vagaries of supply and demand are something that can be calculated exactly before the manufacturing process, this makes no sense. While I'm sure Glock is concerned with the resale value of their product, it seems exceedingly unlikely that any illegal purchasing happens until the weapon is at least a few steps removed from Glock's hands... in which case, wtf do they have to do with it? In this instance they sold a gun to the police, who then sold it to a licensed dealer. Glock's ability to convince police departments to upgrade their armament is somehow equivalent to "marketing their firearms to illegal purchasers". Okay then. As long as all the primary purchases are legit, how can the plaintiffs accuse Glock of over-saturating the market? Obviously legal buyers exist, or Glock couldn't move their product out of the warehouse.

3) "With respect to Glock, plaintiffs specifically alleged that Glock targets its firearms to law enforcement first to gain credibility and then uses the enhanced value that comes with law enforcement use to increase gun sales in the civilian market."

For the sake of commentary, I'll assume the civilian and criminal markets are synonymous or else this revelation has no point. Now, I'm trying to imagine how this makes any difference to a murderer. Does he think to himself, "Man, it would be HELLA gangsta if I shot up this synagogue with the same pistol the cops use. That would make this way more heinous than your average hate crime."? A final tidbit on pistols and their marketability to criminals: a google search on ohhla.com (the original hip hop lyric archive) returns ~4,500 hits for "Glock". Where’s the investigation of Glock corporation's donations of cases of Crystal to major record labels?

Okay, I'll stop rambling about this, but it just astounds me how frivolous some of this shit is. I'm torn, because I'd like to see the family of the victim compensated, but we're going about it all wrong. I propose we levy a nice hefty fine against the jackass lawyers who bring frivolous suits into court. This money will then be redistributed to the families in cases like this, which would hopefully drastically reduce the number who get talked into these suits by slimeball lawyers looking for a payout. And yes, I realize that was a highly conservative sounding rant... don't worry, I'm burning an effigy of the president right now to balance things out.

In other news, my local indy theater (The Palm) is showing the director's cut of Donnie Darko for a limited time. I couldn't find any theaters in the Bay doing the same, so if anyone is interested in hanging in SLO next weekend and checking that out, I extend an open invitation. Or you could just save yourself the three hour drive and cop the DVD.