Immunity for Facilitating Murder

By Thomas Coffin

A recent news release by the ominously named Illinois gun manufacturer “Wee 1 Tactical” promoted an assault rifle for children which is modeled after the AR-15 military style weapon already being marketed to adults (https://wee1tactical.com/.)

The child version is dubbed the JR-15, but it is no toy. It is a semi-automatic fully functional assault rifle weighing only 2.3 lbs. but which the manufacturer promises “packs the same deadly punch as the full-sized version of the AR-15” (which weighs 6.5 lbs., too heavy for the “wee ones.”)

The Wee 1 Tactical promotional material feature the images of boy and girl skulls with crossbones, pacifiers in their mouths, and targets reflected in their eyes. The JR-15, of course, fires .22 caliber bullets, the type of ammo used at Parkland, Sandy Hook, and countless other mass shootings which have claimed thousands of lives throughout our nation.

This promotion comes on the heels of 136 shootings on school campuses just between August and December 2021, in the first four months of this year’s school term. Oxford High School in Michigan was the site of one of those shootings, where four students were murdered and six wounded by a 15-year old boy wielding a semi-auto pistol purchased as an early Christmas present for him by his parents.

The NRA has dubbed the AR-15 as “America’s Most Popular Rifle.” There are at least 8,000,000 of them throughout the country and are seemingly the weapon of choice for mass shooters.

In a flawed and even illogical opinion, a federal judge in California extrapolated from a stray remark by Justice Scalia, in a Second Amendment case concerning a handgun possessed by a homeowner for self-defense in his dwelling, that the popularity of a firearm among gun owners is itself sufficient under the Amendment to insulate it from government regulation. But the assumption that all gun owners purchase or possess a gun for lawful self-defense or protection of the homestead is patently false. Military style assault rifles are coveted by mass shooters and a legion of other criminals as well. Such a large volume of these weapons are purchased by and for drug cartels in Mexico, for instance, to have motivated that sovereignty to itself file a lawsuit against American gun manufacturers alleging that they market them specifically to the criminals organizations which then use them to commit murders, kidnappings, extortions, and destabilize the government. Our own ATF agency (The Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives) calculates that 70% to 90% of firearms recovered from Mexican crime scenes originated in the United States.

Beyond criminals being included in the assault rifle popularity contest based on revenue from sales, there are no surveys or input considered from other groups impacted by the selling of such military weaponry to the private sector. Thus parents of school children, victims of shootings, teachers, shoppers at malls, and indeed the vast number of the population who desire to frequent venues open to the public safely and without fear of being randomly murdered by a terrorist wielding a “most popular rifle” are not consulted at all in what is a slanted and biased, yet supposedly binding, poll on the absolutist reach of the Second Amendment.

In another development, Remington Arms insurance carriers settled an historic lawsuit brought by the families of nine children murdered in the Sandy Hook school shooting by a killer possessing a military style assault rifle which the company manufactured and sold. The total amount of the settlement was reported as $73 million, all of it funded by insurance carriers. None of the families consider the settlement as adequate compensation for the loss of their loved ones and would give everything to have prevented the tragedy. Their motive in bringing the lawsuit was to save others from suffering the same grievous loss by holding the gun industry accountable and ending the carnage being inflicted by the industry’s profiting through the marketing of military weaponry to the general public.

Remington filed bankruptcy and was opposed to settling the case, as was the rest of the arms industry and gun rights organizations. The industry views the immunity that Congress conferred through the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act (PLCAA), enacted in 2005, as a legal shield from virtually all lawsuits and accountability. The courage of the plaintiffs and their attorneys in pursuing the case against Remington was a monumental victory for the common good of society and protection of future victims of the industry’s greed. Although Remington and the industry looked to the PLCAA as a get out of jail card, the attorneys for the victims cited Connecticut state law in support of their claims and the carriers decided to settle. Undoubtedly Remington’s ad campaign promoting its assault rifle to adolescent males using slogans such as “Consider your man card reissued” concerned the carriers enough to resolve the litigation with a significant settlement.

I am very familiar with insurance carriers and their calculated risk assessments from years of interacting with them as a mediator in my capacity as a judicial officer. The higher the risk, the higher the premiums carriers charge the insured for coverage. And the more the activity to be insured increases the exposure, the more the carriers attempt to exclude or minimize coverage for the activity. The Remington settlement has sent shock waves to the gun merchants. They will be reluctant to market their product if the insurance coverage is not there, too expensive, or subjected to excessive deductibles.

The PLCAA is literally a green light for enabling murder and getting away with it. The Wee 1 Tactical promotion demonstrates there is no bottom to the abyss which Congress created with this gift of a “get out of jail card.” I simply lack the words to describe the depravity that spawns commercial trafficking of deadly military weapons to adolescents when we all know the inevitable outcome of such proliferation of such arms. The Oxford High mass shooting is a tragic example, as well as an unfortunately very predictable one, when the gun industry’s greed for profits expands their market to teenagers and youths with pacifiers in their mouths.

Congress must serve the people, our children, our grandchildren, not the merchants who profit from their murders. Why on earth does Congress immunize them?

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Thomas Coffin was the keynote speaker at the Blackberry Pie Society’s Political Party in February, 2020.

He is a retired federal magistrate judge for the U.S. District Court for the District of Oregon and a former professor at the UO Law School.
Thomas retired in 2016 after 24 years on the bench, prior to which he had a career as a federal prosecutor spanning 21 years. He is married with 7 children.
The Blackberry Pie Society is pleased to include a collection of his essays on our website. We will post them as they become available.

Posted 3.2.2022