Mean Arms to Pay $1.75 Million Over Buffalo Shooting

To call the Buffalo shooting an atrocity is putting it mildly. The racist motivation and nature of the attack make it more despicable than most other mass murders I’ve covered over the years, and those are bad enough as they are.

But at the end of the day, the only person who was responsible for the killing is the racist jackwagon who pulled the trigger.

Unfortunately, another member of the firearm industry has agreed to pay out over things that simply aren’t their fault. This time, it’s a company out of Georgia that was held responsible.

The maker of a gun accessory tied to a racist shooting that killed 10 Black people at a supermarket in Buffalo will pay $1.75 million to survivors and victims’ families and stop selling the device in New York, state Attorney General Letitia James said Wednesday.

The agreement with Georgia-based Mean Arms settles a lawsuit filed by James and covers claims from various victims’ families and survivors of the 2022 attack at Tops Friendly Market. They also reached agreements to resolve their own separate suits against gunman Payton Gendron’s family and a gun seller, Vintage Firearms LLC, the plaintiffs’ lawyers announced Wednesday.

The claims against Mean Arms focused on an item that locks a magazine onto a rifle. The lock is supposed to keep people from swapping in high-capacity magazines, which are illegal in New York.

But according to James, Gendron easily removed the lock from an AR-15-style rifle and was able to add high-capacity magazines. She also said the company provided step-by-step instructions on the back of its product packaging on how to remove the lock.

“We hope that by holding this manufacturer accountable and banning it from selling this device in New York state, we can offer the people of Buffalo some measure of comfort,” James, a Democrat, said at a news conference in the city.

Honestly, I don’t see why Mean Arms should be accountable for telling people how to remove something that isn’t required in most other states. Someone from New York might have a lock on their gun, but then move to Tennessee for work, where they no longer need any such thing. The information provided would be applicable then.

Plus, it’s just words. It’s not telling anyone they should, which means it’s not incitement or anything like that. It’s free speech.

For what it’s worth, Mean Arms didn’t reply to requests for comment, and I’m sure they just settled to put all of this behind them. It’s not like they’re a massive corporation that has thousands of people working for them and a team of attorneys that can handle this without stressing anyone at the company out. It’s just not that kind of business, from what I can tell. 

Instead, it’s a relatively small company making some neat products for people who have AR-15s, including some tools for people who live in restrictive states like New York.

The problem is that now, states like New York will feel even more emboldened to challenge the firearm industry when some jackwagon breaks the law and hurts a bunch of people.

It’s not enough to hold the killer accountable, you see. Everyone agrees that needs to happen, at least when they don’t off themselves to avoid accountability. No, they have to punish as many people as they can, even if they didn’t actually do anything technically wrong.

And just like the Sandy Hook settlement made by Remington’s insurance company, this will just make them think they’ve found a path forward.

But on the same token, it’s easy for me to say that they should have kept fighting because politics, when it wasn’t my call. Anyone who has dealt with a lawsuit knows what a stressor it is, and it’s easy to judge that someone should hold the line when you’re not the one dealing with it.

I don’t like it, but it’s not like it was ever my call.

Editor’s Note: The radical left will stop at nothing to enact their radical gun control agenda and strip us of our Second Amendment rights.

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