A Utah jury has awarded $1.5 million in punitive damages to the parents of a man who committed suicide with a shotgun he bought at K-Mart, bringing the total award to $3 million. http://www.sltrib.com/09142001/utah/132046.htm

As much as I love seeing the management of K-Mart get dumped on for their cowardly decisions on the gun issue https://www.KeepAndBearArms.com/newsarchives/XcNewsPlus.asp?cmd=view&articleid=1957, this is a dangerous precedent for all gun owners. As the sale was legal, this now creates precedent for a presumption that gun dealers must know the hearts and minds of their customers, a clear impossibility.

The parents of Ryan Eslinger knew their son was incapable of living without custodial supervision-- yet they allowed him to roam free in a society where potential weapons of mass destruction such as gasoline and matches are readily available https://www.KeepAndBearArms.com/information/XcIBViewItem.asp?ID=584. The reasonable assumption by those who knew Ryan best would have been that he posed a danger to others as well as himself--why didn't they have him committed somewhere instead of expecting strangers to be able to read their son's mind? Also, as the most damning testimony against K-Mart came from the contested recounting of a former employee who appears eager to come forward against his former employer, such a witness certainly cannot be considered unbiased.

Imagine this scenario-- assuming all other factors about compliance with the law being the same, if Eslinger was a member of a minority group and they REFUSED the LAWFUL SALE, K-Mart could have had an even bigger judgment levied against them for discrimination. From the perspective of corporate risk, this placed them in a literal "no-win" situation, which is an intolerable legal dilemma. Again, if this precedent and standard is now applied to all gun dealers, and why wouldn't it be (?), the only solution to eliminate liability will be to quit selling guns.

Also, what if, instead of a gun, Eslinger had legally bought a car, and then driven it off a cliff? Or a rope from the hardware store and hanged himself? Or a straight razor, or a bottle of aspirin...

While I still have no respect for their corporate management and have resolved never to shop there again, I hope K-Mart decides to appeal this. Because if allowed to stand, it will hurt us all.

David Codrea
codrea4@home.com

Guns- good AND good FOR you! Find out why at:

www.guntruths.com/
www.citizensofamerica.org/
www.keepandbeararms.com/