Word: gunness
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Aides to Attorney General John Ashcroft have quietly sidetracked a White House--promised study of ballistics fingerprinting, a forensic technique hotly opposed by the gun lobby. Last October, during the Washington sniper shootings, presidential spokesman Ari Fleischer dismissed calls for a national ballistics fingerprint database that would link possible criminals to the unique markings left on spent bullets. But after critics accused the White House of being too beholden to the National Rifle Association, President Bush reversed course and ordered the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) to conduct a scientific study of the technique, in which microscopic markings...
...months later, the study hasn't even begun. ATF officials were about to get started when the agency was transferred by the Homeland Security reorganization from the Treasury Department to Justice. Aides to Ashcroft, a dependable ally of the pro-gun lobby, then raised concerns about a January 2003 California state government report suggesting that wear and tear may alter a gun's ballistic signature. ATF firearms experts challenged the California findings, but Ashcroft's advisers decided to take the White House study away from ATF and hand it to an outside, presumably more objective, agency. "We wanted to have...
...Senate will soon be voting on a bill passed by the House of Representatives that grants gun dealers, distributors and manufacturers immunity from almost all litigation. Denise Johnson, whose husband died last fall in the Washington-area sniper shootings and who is suing the store that supplied the rifle, told reporters, “I’m appalled and outraged that Congress can take away my rights as an American to have my day in court...
Supported by the National Rifle Association (NRA), this bill calls for unprecedented industry-wide immunity from lawsuits and threatens Americans’ constitutional right to sue. The gun industry has tried to construe the new legislation as a safeguard against gun-control activists; general counsel of the National Shooting Sports Foundation Lawrence G. Keane argues that the legislation would “prevent frivolous, politically motivated lawsuits...
While most gun rights issues are centered on the Second Amendment, this new legislation concerns the First and Seventh Amendments, which both give victims of gun violence the right to bring litigation against negligent gun dealers and manufacturers. The First Amendment states that Congress cannot remove a citizen’s right “to petition the government for a redress of grievances,” and the Seventh Amendment states, “In suits at common law… the right of trial by jury shall be preserved.” Immunity for the gun industry...