Democrat front runner Hillary Rodham Clinton is learning something about karma after she attacked rival Sen. Bernie Sanders for his contention that victims of gun crimes shouldn’t be able to sue gun makers for injuries caused by people using their products.
Now Clinton is under fire for reportedly intimating that Vermont, from whence Sanders hails, is a major source of guns confiscated by authorities in New York. She reportedly made that claim in a private meeting with Empire State legislators, but according to Reason.com, it isn’t true.
In an online Reason report, the news organ explained, “In 2014, according to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives, 55 crime guns seized in New York were traced to dealers in Vermont. That represented 1.2 percent of the 4,585 gun traces in which the location of the original sale could be identified. Vermont ranked 15th among the states where the crime guns were sold, far behind New York (1,397), Virginia (395), Georgia (386), Pennsylvania (371), and Florida (292).”
Fifty-five firearms out of a total of more than 4,500 seized amounts to campaign fodder and nothing more.
Clinton was on the attack against Sanders position on gun lawsuits, but the aging senator has the law on his side. The Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act was passed during the second Bush administration in response to a series of harassment lawsuits filed against the gun industry by anti-gun municipal governments.
Clinton wants to repeal that legislation, opening the door for a resurrection of what the gun industry has dubbed “junk lawsuits.” The strategy behind these legal actions seems to have been to financially damage the firearms industry while seeking to create court precedent that holds a manufacture liable for harm done with a product by some consumer who is not under the control of the manufacturer. If this were applied to automobiles or other industries, there might be fury across American industry and on Capitol Hill.
There is also speculation that Clinton is nervous about Sanders’ string of victories in primaries and caucuses in several states, including a smashing win over Clinton in Wisconsin.
But now that she is being called on her claim about guns from Vermont, she might be forced to tone down the anti-gun rhetoric, or she may ramp it up further to drown out the critics.
H/T Seattle Gun Rights Examiner
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