I think that in the Newtown case, the young man did not own the firearms; his mother did. Whether she is involved in the suit, I don't know.
That's not to say that the law makes it possible or not for a person diagnosed with a mental or emotional disorder to legally purchase a firearm, as I don't know enough about it. And in some cases (Colin Ferguson comes to mind) there is no way to know that a person making a legal gun purchase (and clearing the federally-mandated waiting period) is planning to use it to go on a shooting spree. I think that there may have been an attempt at suing a firearms manufacturer in that case as well, but am not sure.
That's not to say that the law makes it possible or not for a person diagnosed with a mental or emotional disorder to legally purchase a firearm, as I don't know enough about it. And in some cases (Colin Ferguson comes to mind) there is no way to know that a person making a legal gun purchase (and clearing the federally-mandated waiting period) is planning to use it to go on a shooting spree. I think that there may have been an attempt at suing a firearms manufacturer in that case as well, but am not sure.
"Well, evolution is a theory. It is also a fact. And facts and theories are different things, not rungs in a hierarchy of increasing certainty. Facts are the world's data. Theories are structures of ideas that explain and interpret facts. Facts don't go away when scientists debate rival theories to explain them. Einstein's theory of gravitation replaced Newton's in this century, but apples didn't suspend themselves in midair, pending the outcome. And humans evolved from ape- like ancestors whether they did so by Darwin's proposed mechanism or by some other yet to be discovered."
-Stephen Jay Gould
-Stephen Jay Gould
