Republican Rep. Mike Kelly isn't just a member of Congress representing Pennsylvania’s 16th District—he's also an auto dealer, and, well, this headline from Consumer Affairs says it all:

Congressman who said car dealerships don't sell defective cars is caught selling over a dozen at his own

Credit, however, belongs to reporter Paul Van Osdol at Pittsburgh news station WTAE, who dug deep into a serious issue: used car dealers who've been selling vehicles that have been recalled due to dangerous safety defects. One such vehicle, a rental car, killed 26-year-old Jewel Brangman in 2014, when a faulty airbag went off after a minor crash, firing a burst of metal fragments into her neck that severed her carotid artery.

Those airbags, made by a company called Takata, are responsible for at least 24 deaths worldwide. A recall began more than a decade ago, but last year, Honda said that there were still more than 60,000 vehicles in the U.S. using those same defective airbags.

And how have used car dealers responded? By pushing copycat laws in at least 11 states to allow them to sell vehicles that have been recalled—as long as they note the recall "somewhere in a stack of sales documents," as an investigative report from USA Today, the Arizona Republic, and the Center for Public Integrity put it.

Two states have passed this so-called "model legislation" so far: Tennessee and Pennsylvania. Astoundingly, in the latter, this disastrous anti-consumer measure was approved by Democratic governor Tom Wolf, and Congressman Kelly's been taking full advantage of it.