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[besada]

This doesn't sound right.

They can refuse for any legal reason. In other words, they can't discriminate. So the real question is whether the state they're in has disability/mental health as a protected category. And "disability: physical/mental" is in fact a protected class in Missouri.

So the question is, since the gun store owner can't discriminate based on mental health (except where the law allows), can the gun store owner refuse to sell based on the phone call which notifies him of a history of danger, as opposed to the mental illness itself.

I suspect the court will discuss it and we'll see.

But until the laws change, generally speaking, if you have not been committed, but are mentally ill, not only are you allowed to buy a gun, but in most states gun store owners are required, by the same laws that require cake bakers to bake cakes for gay weddings, to sell them a gun.

 

[hydragonwarrior]

NRA will say the dad should have been armed or some bullshit like that.

 

[Makonero]

The system is broken beyond putting any sort of individual culpability on this one gun store owner.

Everyone failed. The government failed, the way background checks are set up is a failure, the police, the ATF, the FBI, the gun store, all of them failed and a man is dead.

As I said, the system is broken. But we have to fix it piece by piece and not divert blame from anyone. They all are culpable.

 

[Damaniel]

Yep. Don't want to be in the business of denying people their constitutional rights. Thats a good way to end up in the national news too

Well, someone had their constitutional rights taken away, and it wasn't the crazy lady with the handgun she shouldn't have been sold in the first place. Sadly, the Second Amendment always wins - doesn't matter how many rooms full of elementary school children die, things will never change.

 

[cDNA]

Of course it's right. Any business can refuse service to anyone. Ever had a bartender tell you you're cut off?

Not true the civil rights act have several reason in which the business cannot discriminate against the customer like race.

 

[onadesertedisland]

But my 2nd amendment?

 

[Ninja Scooter]

Of course it's right. Any business can refuse service to anyone. Ever had a bartender tell you you're cut off?

Being shitfaced is not a protected class. Having a mental disability likely is.

 

[RS4-]

A man is dead because someone didn't heed a warning.

Also:



So the shop didn't give a fuck and still doesn't.

Sells guns, doesn't abide by the rules, still allowed to sell guns.

Amazing.

 

[commedieu]

I agree with the gunshop owner. They sound like cunts, but I still side with them, on this isolated issue. I would have pressed to not have to settle. Unless there is more info, than a phone call, they didn't do anything illegal, but, Apparently, a phone call is enough proof that they should have acted on it.

The law is that any moron can buy a gun that passes a flimsy background check. It's not their fault she is legally allowed to buy a gun. That's her right. Even if she is literally insane, or suicidal.

I'm sure the court judged this correctly based on the info. But I don't agree that they should be held responsible for selling a gun legally.

tough call.. but thats why we have judges.


Edit: and it appears they were a terrible shop with multiple violations.

 

[Makonero]

NRA will say the dad should have been armed or some bullshit like that.

Delana grew up around guns. Her father was an avid hunter. Her husband, the high school sweetheart she married when she was 17, cleaned guns on the porch of their two-bedroom cottage. Their dates included target practice.

A Browning pistol her husband bought still rests in the gun safe next to Delana’s bed, as much for sentiment as protection.

Delana doesn’t want to take guns away from everybody — just from people like her daughter who are struggling with mental illness. After a career in state government helping other people navigate Missouri’s social-services system, she is frustrated she couldn’t do more to stop her daughter from getting a gun.

Tex Delana, the father who was murdered, was a gun enthusiast. He took and locked her first gun away when she tried to kill herself. The Delanas are a family that supports the second amendment, but the system failed them.

 

[L4DANathan]

Normally shit like this gets under my skin, but unless I'm reading this wrong or I missed something, I think the shop owner was in the right. You guys are expecting him to tell a customer that he wouldn't sell to her because of a stranger's phone call. On his side, he has no way to know if A) The claim about the mental illness is true, or B) If the caller is actually the mother. The likelihood of one customer using the gun to shoot someone is pretty much the same as any other customer, if he was going to refuse service due to that risk, he wouldn't be selling guns period. From the seller's perspective, this could have easily been a prank call, someone who didn't like guns trying to prevent a sale, or just the mother and daughter having been in an argument with no mental illness involved. He also probably feels awful, considering they settled out of court despite the mother not really having a case as I just outlined.

 

[Glazed]

fucking christ.

 

[Goldenroad]

I have, over the course of my life, known quite a few bad apples. Drug dealers, pimps, whores, thieves, and con artists, and I don't know a single one of them that would be able to navigate the moral gymnastics required to sell that girl a gun. Gun dealers are the worst kind of scum on the earth.

 

[TAJ]

From the seller's perspective, this could have easily been a prank call, someone who didn't like guns trying to prevent a sale, or just the mother and daughter having been in an argument with no mental illness involved. He also probably feels awful, considering they settled out of court despite the mother not really having a case as I just outlined.

I don't see how you read any of the article and came to this conclusion. Think about what she said to the shop owner when she came in. He knew who she was. He knew why she bought that last gun. He knew why she didn't have it anymore and needed another.

 

[Mr.Shrugglesツ]

... didn't they just repeal an Obama-era rule on selling guns to the mentally ill?

Disgusting.

According to the article it wouldn't have matter anyway. She was taking care of her own finances.

I don't see how you read any of the article and came to this conclusion. Think about what she said to the shop owner when she came in. He knew who she was. He knew why she bought that last gun. He knew why she didn't have it anymore and needed another.

Turns out it was just an employee(manager) and not the owner. So explains a little more on the not giving a shit.

 

[Demoskinos]

I just can't comprehend this stuff. That gun shop owner is a scumbag. Valuing $60 at the cost of destroying a family. Fuck that.

 

[Ac30]

According to the article it wouldn't have matter anyway. She was taking care of her own finances.



Turns out it was just an employee(manager) and not the owner. So explains a little more on the not giving a shit.

Wow, had no idea the rule was already so neutered and they still had it repealed. What the fuck.

 

[TAJ]

Turns out it was just an employee(manager) and not the owner. So explains a little more on the not giving a shit.

Explains it even less. If he just worked there then he didn't even stand to make a whopping twenty-something dollars from the sale.
The fact remains that he knew her situation.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

Is that a common enough occurrence that there's an unspoken procedure? I don't know, I'm not familiar with that area at all.

The gun stores actions are technically legal. But they have wide discretion. Do I think they are responsible when someone misuses their firearms? No.

But do I think instances like this would and should make gun store owners want to support better data, more comprehensive data being fed into the NICS system? Absolutely.

I've had gun store owners straight up tell me they don't sell to anyone that comes in the store looking "hood". So if they can do that they can listen to a phone call and think that's strange enough I'm not gonna even risk it. They have discretion. This has been legally upheld time and time again.

 

[RoKKeR]

Fuck.

 

[HawksWinStanley]

So they just kind of gloss over the fact that the police, ATF, and FBI all ignored her. Why exactly would the police not look into this? As sick as it sounds they're lucky she stopped at her dad.

The shop owner is an asshole but he seems like the last one I'd blame after everyone else she tried.

 

[commedieu]

I don't see how you read any of the article and came to this conclusion. Think about what she said to the shop owner when she came in. He knew who she was. He knew why she bought that last gun. He knew why she didn't have it anymore and needed another.

They were told, but it wasn't by any authorities or anything of the sort. It's horrible. But does a gun shop have to legally listen? I guess that's what it boils down to me. But with their background of violations, I can see why they were held liable.

Exactly hawk.

The problem ain't JUST the shop. It's a chain of sizable failures and it highlights a huge problem with how mentally ill is dealt with. It's a tragedy. Things need to be changed so this isn't repeated.

 

[thehypocrite]

Freedom to destroy ourselves, but not to love ourselves. Thanks founding fathers.

 

[Mammoth Jones]

http://wgntv.com/2016/03/28/gun-sto...cted-of-planning-mass-shooting-at-university/

 

[maxiell]

Seems like there is enough blame to go around.

As Delana said in her deposition, a Lafayette County sheriff’s deputy recommended calling the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. ATF referred her to the FBI. And the FBI told her it could take six weeks or more for the agency to review medical records submitted by her daughter’s psychiatrist. Delana said she was told there were no guarantees that the bureau could prevent Weathers from buying a gun.

 

[Goldenroad]

So they just kind of gloss over the fact that the police, ATF, and FBI all ignored her. Why exactly would the police not look into this? As sick as it sounds they're lucky she stopped at her dad.

The shop owner is an asshole but he seems like the last one I'd blame after everyone else she tried.

I run a Paint store. A PAINT STORE. If someone called and asked me to not sell a gallon of Thinner to their daughter who might come in because there is a chance she will hurt herself or someone else with it (ie. burn down the house, poison someone,etc.), there is no way I would sell that gallon. Of course it would be totally legal and within my rights to, but I'm not a piece of human garbage. I would be the first person I'd blame if I did that and something happened after I was warned not to.

 

[kiguel182]

Man, fuck guns.

 

[L4DANathan]

I don't see how you read any of the article and came to this conclusion. Think about what she said to the shop owner when she came in. He knew who she was. He knew why she bought that last gun. He knew why she didn't have it anymore and needed another.

Uh, the article says absolutely nothing about that. In fact, it says nothing about the first gun being to kill anyone, the only mention of it is that:

In May 2012, Weathers announced she was moving out and had bought a gun for protection. Her no-nonsense father told her to buy a baseball bat instead and locked up the gun until he could sell it.

There's no mention that this was even told to the shopkeep anyway:

She gave the store manager her daughter’s name, birth date and Social Security number. She told him that Weathers would probably try to buy another gun after getting her disability payment. She asked him to post the information on a sticky note on the cash register to alert other employees about her daughter.

The article is particularly vague, in fact it doesn't even mention her telling the employee about the mental illness, so the fact I'm assuming the mother told him is already me giving benefit of the doubt to the mother. If the mother told him about the suicide attempts (which were with pills, and apparently not with the first gun at all), we go into a different discussion about assisted suicide. It's very possible that the mother called while upset (why wouldn't she be?) and left out some pieces of information that might have led to some different action on the employee's part.

To be clear, the lack of laws that led to this situation is nothing short of despicable, but I'm defending the employee from the harassment over what was probably a very reasonable decision that just happened to have horrible consequences.

 

[TAJ]

Nvm

 

[UnObtainium17]

I think it will be a good trade that GOP gets their voter id laws and Libs get stricter or total gun ban laws.

 

[necrosis]

this is incredibly fucked

not much of a consolation, but at least she won the lawsuit

 

[Makonero]

I think it will be a good trade that GOP gets their voter id laws and Libs get stricter or total gun ban laws.

What does voter id have to do with any of this shit?

 

[Dehnus]

And Trump just rolled back rules from the last administration, to ensure that as many people with mental illness as possible can buy guns. It's just dangerous and horrifying. I can't even imagine going through this, and the entire system is wired to escape culpability.

Don't blame this on Trump please.

This is a Republican thing. Don't let those weasels get away with blaming it on the God Oompaloompa of Alt Right Kind.


He does a lot wrong, and I despise him for it, but that law has Republicans pleasing the gun lobby written all over it!

Goodness, I'm angry about this law.

 

[commedieu]

Amazing how you're able to spin the parents telling them something like "She bought a gun from you and we took it away from her when she tried to kill herself with it. We believe that she will try to buy another one and finish the job." into something they shouldn't have been concerned about.

Say they are assholes. Which they sound like, it's not criminal. They settled. And are still doing business.

Gun laws are broken, and this is an amazing example of it. Her pleading to authorities failed as well. The entire thing is a disaster that costs people their lives. But if the penalty is settling, well, what else can be said about it?

The shop has a laundry list of violations and it's still open.

 

[CSJ]

Normally shit like this gets under my skin, but unless I'm reading this wrong or I missed something, I think the shop owner was in the right. You guys are expecting him to tell a customer that he wouldn't sell to her because of a stranger's phone call. On his side, he has no way to know if A) The claim about the mental illness is true, or B) If the caller is actually the mother. The likelihood of one customer using the gun to shoot someone is pretty much the same as any other customer, if he was going to refuse service due to that risk, he wouldn't be selling guns period. From the seller's perspective, this could have easily been a prank call, someone who didn't like guns trying to prevent a sale, or just the mother and daughter having been in an argument with no mental illness involved. He also probably feels awful, considering they settled out of court despite the mother not really having a case as I just outlined.

A prank call?
How is that anything like a prank, being so detailed in your plea, trying to reason with someone's humanity and empathy. You'd have to be a sociopath to ignore it, have some god damned sanity for fuck sake.

I wonder how often it happens like this for it to be ignored and thought of as a prank.

For me it's a no brainer, if I worked somewhere such as the above and someone tried their best to stop someone buying something like that for those reasons, I'd be pointing to my right to refuse a sale.

 

[TAJ]

Say they are assholes. Which they sound like, it's not criminal. They settled. And are still doing business.

Gun laws are broken, and this is an amazing example of it.

You know that legal=correct doesn't work out very well for a lot of the things you care about, surely?

 

[Javaman]

... didn't they just repeal an Obama-era rule on selling guns to the mentally ill?

Disgusting.

This happened back in 2012 FYI.

 

[Mr.Shrugglesツ]

Regarding the refusal of sale:

The provisions of this section shall not apply to any individual federal firearms license holder, his agents, or employees to the extent they chose in their individual judgment to not complete the sale or transfer of a firearm for articulable reasons specific to that transaction, so long as those reasons are not based on the race, gender, religion, creed of the buyer..

http://smartgunlaws.org/dealer-regulations-in-missouri/

 

[L4DANathan]

A prank call?
How is that anything like a prank, being so detailed in your plea, trying to reason with someone's humanity and empathy. You'd have to be a sociopath to ignore it, have some god damned sanity for fuck sake.

I wonder how often it happens like this for it to be ignored and thought of as a prank.

For me it's a no brainer, if I worked somewhere such as the above and someone tried their best to stop someone buying something like that for those reasons, I'd be pointing to my right to refuse a sale.

Yeah, the inclusion of "prank call" in the reasons was stupid, but the argument is still solid if you remove that.

 

[commedieu]

You know that legal=correct doesn't work out very well for a lot of the things you care about, surely?

I'm not making that declaration. The shitty shop is legally allowed to continue racking up violations and hasn't been shut down. I don't believe that they feel pressure to take phone calls seriously. Settling and staying open certainly will be a wrist slap, but overall, there a million failures that led to the fathers death.

If it was the law to take all phone calls seriously they should be shut down and held responsible. But that isn't what is happening here.

 

[kmfdmpig]

You CAN sell them a gun, but should you? Stores always reserve the right to refuse service.
.

Exactly. His response about "I can sell" is correct, but he certainly shouldn't have sold in this case.

 

[Makonero]

I'm not making that declaration. The shitty shop is legally allowed to continue racking up violations and hasn't been shut down. I don't believe that they feel pressure to take phone calls seriously. Settling and staying open certainly will be a wrist slap, but overall, there a million failures that led to the fathers death.

If it was the law to take all phone calls seriously they should be shut down and held responsible. But that isn't what is happening here.

The problem is, with the whole system at fault, there's nowhere to start. The cops pointed to ATF, ATF pointed to FBI, the gun owner pointed to legislation. The buck never stops anywhere. It all needs to be fixed. In fact, the gun owner is the last stop. But he absolutely should not have sold her that gun.

 

[Kronotech]

This story needs to be thrown in every Republican politician's face, constantly. This is what the Conservative gun nuts need to understand about what the Left has been trying to accomplish.

These restrictions aren't meant to take away your rights. They're meant to save lives. This is heartbreaking.

 

[jay]

That moral responsibility.

All Americans have a moral responsibility to make money.

 

[kmax]

This ultimately shoudn't be on the gun stores. This should be on the government. They failed, and are continuing to fail the country with these inane gun laws.

Children are getting murdered, while terrorists and the mentally ill are free to buy guns without any restrictions whatsoever. There isn't any other country on this planet that is comparable to the U.S.

The United States, with less than 5 percent of the world’s population, has about 35-50 percent of the world’s civilian-owned guns

As of 2016, there were no federal laws banning semiautomatic assault weapons, military-style .50 caliber rifles, handguns, or large-capacity ammunition magazines, which can increase the potential lethality of a given firearm. There was a federal prohibition on assault weapons and high-capacity magazines between 1994 and 2004, but Congress allowed these restrictions to expire.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/how-do-u-s-gun-laws-compare-to-other-countries/

The fact that the country can't bother to put the most basic restrictions on dangerous people just goes to show that it doesn't care about the gun problem.

 

[UnObtainium17]

I would have not sold the gun if i was the store owner. Also if i ever received such call I would not have treated it as a prank call. Though I totally see where he's coming from. What's the most baffling to me was the mom was pretty much ignored by police and fbi. Like isn't it their job to look into something that is threatening to safety of the civilians. How many more of these before we take actions. While on the other hand we ban people from other countries when there is no evidence of them being a threat to our country. Man... our priorities as a country is messed up.

What does voter id have to do with any of this shit?

Nithng at all. But in a hypothetical scenario where you are a dem and gop offered you this deal would you take it? Coz I might.

 

[commedieu]

The problem is, with the whole system at fault, there's nowhere to start. The cops pointed to ATF, ATF pointed to FBI, the gun owner pointed to legislation. The buck never stops anywhere. It all needs to be fixed. In fact, the gun owner is the last stop. But he absolutely should not have sold her that gun.

The police have the power to go to the gun store and let them know the situation is serious vs a phone call by the mother. That should have some weight behind it. The cops didn't care to just help out a little. As they'd at least be able to verify the claims. And let them know the law, and that they might face responsibility. Gun shop shouldn't have, but they did because they could and the store is still open. The gun store shouldn't even be open based on its previous violations, but it is.

It's really easy to focus on them as the ones responsible for the death when they are just the ones selling guns to people, but my focus is on the justice system failing a mother, all the way to the pawn shop. She would have purchased a gun from another location and shot her father as she was suicidal.

They are scumbags for not choosing to deny her a gun, after the calls and pleading by the mother. But what do you call the justice system that passed the buck as well..and didn't make an effort to at least get the word out. Maybe let them know if she buys a gun so they could check on the family/daughter that day. Anything. Now if the answer to that is all "well her rights.." then it's the system that produced a pawn shop that has to leave it up to themselves to sell products or not with their own discretion.

The focal point on this is just a bad gun shop, but they are operating as they've been allowed to. Justice, had been served. They are settling, and will continue to violate gun laws because it's not a big deal.

 

[Acorn]

This ultimately shoudn't be on the gun stores. This should be on the government. They failed, and are continuing to fail the country with these inane gun laws.

Children are getting murdered, while terrorists and the mentally ill are free to buy guns without any restrictions whatsoever. There isn't any other country on this planet that is comparable to the U.S.

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/how-do-u-s-gun-laws-compare-to-other-countries/

The fact that the country can't bother to put the most basic restrictions on dangerous people just goes to show that it doesn't care about the gun problem.

By govt I hope you just mean republicans. Democrats have been trying to change laws for eons.

 

[zeemumu]

I don't understand how paranoid schizophrenia still allows you to pass the background check.

 

[Wag]

Guns don't kill people, people...

Wait...