BELLEVUE, WA – The Second Amendment Foundation (SAF) today hailed a decision by the Connecticut State Supreme Court that the City of Bridgeport does not have legal standing to pursue a lawsuit against the firearms industry.
SAF founder Alan Gottlieb called the ruling “another victory for firearms owners and their civil rights, and another defeat for anti-gun extremists.”
Bridgeport’s loss adds to the growing number of municipal lawsuits against gun makers that have been rejected by the courts. Similar lawsuits filed in Florida, New York, Massachusetts, Ohio, Louisiana, Illinois and Michigan were also thrown out. Bridgeport had appealed an earlier loss to the state high court, asking that it reinstate the case. However, the court said none of the city’s arguments withstood judicial scrutiny, the Associated Press reported.
“With this loss, Bridgeport becomes yet another example of how public officials have wasted taxpayer resources in an effort to grab a few sensational headlines at the expense of a perfectly legitimate industry,” Gottlieb stated. “All the while, lawsuits like Bridgeport’s have not prevented a single crime, or put a single criminal behind bars.”
SAF Public Affairs Director Dave LaCourse said the decision did not come as a big surprise. The lower court initially ruled against Bridgeport on firm legal grounds, and the high court wisely noted that the city had not suffered the kind of direct losses from gun injuries necessary to begin legally pursuing a case.
“We had faith that the Connecticut Supreme Court would uphold the rule of law in this case,” LaCourse said. “Clearly, Bridgeport had no legal standing to bring this action in the first place, and their arguments were, at best, highly questionable.”
Gottlieb said the Bridgeport lawsuit was indicative of what he called a “pattern of abuse” by municipalities around the country that have used the legal system to financially bleed the nation’s gun makers.
“These lawsuits,” he said, “have never really been about money. They have been about publicity, political correctness, and persecution of an industry almost to the point of financial ruin. What a waste.”
This latest ruling is further proof that the Second Amendment Foundation was correct in filing a lawsuit against the U.S. Conference of Mayors (USCM) and certain individual mayors for conspiracy to violate civil and constitution rights, including the First, Second and Ninth Amendments, as well as the creation of undue burden on lawful interstate commerce. This case was recently heard in the U.S. Court of Appeals in Washington, DC.