The Supreme Court has given the go-ahead to Sandy Hook victims to file suit against gunmaker Remington Arms. The ruling against Remington is a case of bad precedent on top of bad judgment.

On December 13, 2012, the deranged Adam Lanza murdered his mom with her own rifle and then butchered twenty students and six teachers. He used an AR-like weapon, similar to ones that have been in widespread use for a half century and manufactured by dozens of makers and assemblers of like kind.

The earlier suit against the gunmaker by the parents of the victims was thrown out by the lower courts on the basis of the 2005 Protection of Lawful Commerce in Arms Act, which prevents lawsuits against a party for the commission of crimes by another party. In other words, the chef and restaurant cannot be sued because one patron of a restaurant overate and had a heart attack.

The summary of the act: "To prohibit civil liability actions from being brought or continued against manufacturers, distributors, dealers, or importers of firearms or ammunition for damages, injunctive or other relief resulting from the misuse of their products by others."

According to the New York Post:

The families are grateful that the Supreme Court upheld precedent and denied Remington's latest attempt to avoid accountability," Joshua Koskoff, a lawyer for the Sandy Hook families, said in a statement. We are ready to resume discovery and proceed towards trial in order to shed light on Remington's profit-driven strategy to expand the AR-15 market and court high-risk users at the expense of Americans' safety. Previously, the Connecticut Supreme Court ruled 4-3 that the lawsuit could continue, citing an exemption in the federal law.

The connection between a shooter and a manufacturer of guns or ammunition is at most incidental or coincidental. Manufacturers of guns have nothing to do with the shooting, any more than automakers have to do with driving. The only constant in this picture is the criminal.

The laws protecting a party from the evil acts of another party go back to pre-biblical concepts of justice and logic and certainly pre-constitutional Common Law. So does the right of self-defense, which includes also the right to one's private property, as well as the right to one's life.

Take away the means to self-defense (one's right to weapons), and one's life can end without meaning.

What SCOTUS gave America in violation of its previous rulings is a Pandora's box — poorly reasoned arguments and a precedent that can overturn any existing law on the books already, and more importantly, all former rulings covering lawful commerce. It means that all gun manufacturers are at risk for the mere crime of lawfully manufacturing, transporting, and selling guns with traceable serial numbers. It means that all manufacturers of firearms, handguns, and ammo are at risk.