OPPOSE the Gun Carve-Out Amendment to S. 625-- Bankruptcy Reform

[nralife]

-- Texas State Rifle Association Email ---
November 09, 1999

OPPOSE the Gun Carve-Out Amendment to S. 625
-- Bankruptcy Reform Bill

During the debate on this bill, anti-Second Amendment Senators such as Carl
Levin, Richard Durbin and Frank Lautenberg may offer an amendment to exclude the
firearms industry from the protections afforded businesses under Chapter 11.

Bankruptcy Reform Legislation Should Apply to All Lawful Products. There is no
rational basis to exclude firearms companies from the procedural rules
established in S. 625. Excluding firearms from the scope of S. 625 is patently
unfair; prejudicial treatment of a particular product or industry makes no more
sense than preferential treatment does. While different industries face diverse
challenges, one important strength of the bankruptcy system is that its rules
apply equally to all.

Offering this amendment to promote issues having nothing to do with bankruptcy
reform is nothing but a veiled attempt to encourage the vexatious litigation
against the firearms industry.

The Gun Carve-Out Amendment Encourages Targeted Litigation . By ensuring that
only the gun industry would be unable to seek bankruptcy protection against
debts from certain civil judgements, frivolous and reckless lawsuits would be
encouraged.

Lawsuits against the firearms industry seeking recovery of damages for
third-party criminal or unlawful misuse of their products have been almost
universally unsuccessful. Most recently, an Ohio court dismissed with prejudice
a suit against the gun industry, stating that the suit is an improper attempt to
have this Court substitute its judgment for that of the legislature, something
which this Court is neither inclined nor empowered to do. City of Cincinatti v.
Beretta U.S.A. Corp., et al. (Court of Common Pleas, Hamilton County, Ohio,
October 7, 1999).

However, given even a single successful judgement, those who seek to destroy the
gun industry --and thus the Second Amendment--would have a ready means to do so;
those who merely seek their own financial gain would gain unlimited access to
the industrys pockets. The amendment is offered with no purpose other than to
demonize firearms and encourage more reckless lawsuits in order to put the
firearms industry out of business.

Please visit the Texas State Rifle Association website: http://www.tsra.com/


Joe's Second Amendment Message Board

 

[Futo Inu]

Oppose all bankruptcy reform period! The system has been and is working just fine. The "reform" bills just give free cookies and candy to big-money banks and creditors. The credit card banks are just like the kid on the school playground who is losing the game, so he wants to change the rules. The creditors got extremely greedy with the high margins of revolving credit products, so they made their credit-granting policies extremely lax, and now the want to change the rules since so many people have become insolvent and filed for bankruptcy. What a bunch of spoiled whiners. Everyone knew the "rules" of the bankruptcy system; now the creditors don't want to live by them. When you give a 21% credit card to an 18 year old college students with no income, and to people making $800/month, like some of my clients, you have no room to complain when they file bankruptcy. There is not one thing in the reform bill(s) that help debtors - its all about hurting debtors & helping creditors. If anything, the laws should be more favorable to debtors. Yes my opinion is biased, but I think it's realistic. I have many clients who owe literally tens of thousands of dollars in student loans, which are now not dischargeable at all in bankruptcy, because they attended a bartending or hair design or dog grooming or broadcast journalism or truck driving school that either went out of business before they got their degree, or bestowed a worthless degree on them. Those types of schools who tap into fed student loan money are the real greedy pigs who ought to have legislation aimed at them, not the debtors in bankruptcy. EOR (end of rant).