Attorneys for the city of Chicago pulled the lawsuit they filed against Glock back in March and replaced it with an expanded version on Monday. The city makes the same insane and absurd claim that it did back in March: that somehow the ability of an owner of a Glock to install a sear — a “Glock switch” that turns the semiautomatic pistol into a rapid-firing weapon — directly contributes to Chicago’s outrageous level of gun violence.
The fact that gun makers are protected from such frivolous and expensive lawsuits by federal law doesn’t matter. It’s punishment by litigation. The city, unable to restrain its gun violence, is spending its resources finding someone to blame instead. The new lawsuit now includes Glock’s parent company, Glock.Ges.m.b.H., located in Austria, along with two of Chicago’s most popular gun stores, Eagle Sports Range and Midwest Sporting Goods. They are collectively charged under the new filing with violating the city’s municipal code prohibiting anyone from engaging in “any conduct constituting an unlawful act or practice under the law.”
Unfounded Charges
The complaint is filled with vitriol and unfounded charges, reflecting the bankruptcy of the city’s position:
The machine gun has returned as a weapon of choice for criminals in Chicago—this time in the form of a Glock pistol, which can be easily modified into a machine gun using a simple, quarter-sized device called an auto sear.
The city claims that Glock designed its pistols deliberately so that criminals could modify them:
Glock designed its pistol so that with a simple modification it becomes a machine gun, and Glock knows that its pistols are frequently modified in this manner.
Without attribution the lawsuit claims that the ATF has warned Glock about its nefarious and intentional design flaw:
Glock has been warned by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (“ATF”) about the gun’s design and knows it could fix the problem, but has chosen not to, putting profits over public safety, and violating the law.
The city “knows” that Glock “knows” that its design is “flawed” but continues to offer its pistols for sale anyway.
Glock involves local businesses in its criminal enterprise, according to the lawsuit:
Glock further aggravates this problem by utilizing some of the most irresponsible gun stores in the country, like Defendants Eagle Sports Range and Midwest Sporting Goods, to distribute its pistols, even though it knows or has reason to know that these stores are catering to criminals.
Further, according to the suit:
The top three sources of crime guns were all Glock-preferred dealers, jointly accounting for approximately 13% of all crime guns in the City that were traced to a known purchaser.
“Crime guns”?
Notice how subtly the charges are made. The dealers are “irresponsible,” they “cater to criminals,” and, therefore, they are responsible for Chicago’s record levels of gun violence. All without proof. But in a war, proofs of groundless charges aren’t necessary.
The complaint continues:
Glock has known about its dangerous design for years. Instead of making the simple change that would prevent the uniquely easy modification of Glock pistols into illegal machine guns, Glock has made the business decision to continue profiting from the sales of its easily modified guns to the civilian market.
“Profit over principle” is the underlying message. Glock is greedy, the stores are complicit, and the design is intentional. Therefore Glock needs to be prohibited from selling their pistols in the city through its preferred network of gun dealers. And pay a fine. And pay their own legal fees along with legal costs incurred by the city.
The Lawsuit’s Real Purpose
According to The Center Square, the Second Amendment Foundation’s Alan Gottlieb called out the city for its disingenuous, frivolous, and unconstitutional claims, as well as its real purpose:
If somebody alters [a] Glock and makes it an illegal gun, they should be going after the criminal who did it. And of course, Chicago has a great track record of not prosecuting criminals who misuse firearms. And that’s where the [real] problem lies….
Going after the industry is only being done because they want to put gun manufacturers out of business.
The federal law protecting Glock and the two gun stores being charged in the lawsuit filed on Monday is the Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, or PLCAA. It was signed into law by then-President George W. Bush in 2005, and prohibits “civil liability actions from being brought or continued against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages, injunctive or other relief resulting from the misuse of their products by others.”
That should settle the matter. It should have thwarted efforts by anti-gun politicians in Chicago to bring such a frivolous lawsuit in the first place. But there’s a war going on against the private ownership of firearms in this country, and niceties like following the law are ignored. The real purpose is to bankrupt the gun dealers and cause significant financial and public-relations harm to Glock, the maker of the most popular handgun in America.
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