You do appear calloused though, and you also don’t appear to have read the entire article attached. The same gun has a history of discharging while not even being held. In one case, emptying the clip and wounding several people at a gun range. The young man originally stated that he hadn’t touched the trigger and was convinced otherwise by the FBI. This product history suggests that his original statement may not have been false, but all too possible. It also wasn’t his father. His parents weren’t home at the time.
It’d be refreshing to see you actually get all the facts before your knee jerk reaction and posting.

Actually, I would be VERY surprised if a $10 saw from harbor freight flew off and cut the dog in half.  So surprised, in fact, that I would file complaints and/or a lawsuit against the manufacturer and vendor that sold it to me.  I don’t care what the price is, if it’s got a design flaw that makes it unsafe for operation in any way, it should not be made and sold.  That’s why there are laws regulating consumer products in the United States.

If the firearm used to shoot Brandon fired without the trigger being pulled, either because it was not cleaned and had crap in there built up or something broke, then it should’ve been able to do that in testing afterwards.  Since no mention was made of that in the article I assume it could not be made to fire without manipulating the trigger. 

The various models and calibers of Glock pistols are perhaps the most popular pistols in the US.  They can be loaded or unloaded while the safety is engaged.  But if the trigger is pulled then they go bang, as the only external, user manipulated safety is on the trigger itself.  Because of this their owner’s manual states they Glocks are not to be inserted into leather holsters as the leather can flop  down between the trigger and trigger guard when inserting the pistol and cause the trigger to be manipulated thus firing one round.  Lots of cops have shot themselves in the ass and leg and foot with Glocks.  Are Glocks unsafe?  I’d say nope.  

It’s a very sad case.  I am unsure why the jury found the manufacturer so liable, and the gentleman who shot him not as liable.I am not sure why the pawn shop that sold the gun was sued at all nor why they were at all liable.  The article really wasn’t very good.  At least it did not have all the information that I wanted to find out in there.  

I am unfamiliar with bankruptcy law.  If they were selling off the assets of the company to pay off the creditors, and Brandon was the largest creditor, you’d think there would be some mechanism for him bidding whatever for the assets at auction, then saying “we’ll reduce the debt owed to us by that amount” or heck, “we’ll reduce the amount owed us in entirety, in exchange for those assets.”  

It’s a shame Soros or the Brady Center or someone like that wasn’t able to pony up a million dollars or so to buy the company for Brandon’s non-profit.  I don’t think you can do a kickstart campaign for anything involving weapons, though.  A friend was going to do one for an art project where he fired paint projectiles from a mortar.  IIRC he needed 3k for the mortar and another 1,000 for the paint and stuff, but it was not allowed since a mortar is a weapon.  

The liability placed on the gun manufacturer is exactly in line with that placed on every other manufacturer.  As the writer of the article asks – why should gun manufacturers enjoy special exemptions not available to anyone else?  No other consumer goods manufacturer can avoid putting an obvious safety feature in their product, at minimal cost, without incurring liability.  In a world composed of other than ambidextrous, omniscient, athletic geniuses this will, with 100% certainty, cause injuries that couldn’t have occurred if that extra nickel-per-item had been spent.  Any reason why some portion of the ensuing costs can’t be doled out on the basis of that kind of wilful, reckless negligence?  Amongst the costs that these guys skipped out on was that of ever have had an engineer involved in their design process.

There also seems to be an astounding assumption that the baby-sitter should have had, or could have had, any knowledge of firearms safety at all.  ”Should” in the sense of removing 100% of the blame from the manufacturer.  The child in question may not have been planning to ever handle a firearm at any point in the future.  Ah, but then that plan goes out the window when one of your charges walks out of the bedroom with a loaded revolver doesn’t it?  I guess the prudent thing to do would be to say “Well, Little Jimmy, I see you have a loaded firearm there.  As I am not fully qualified to handle such items I must decline to intervene in this situation lest I incur undue liability in the courts of this state.”  In the event, he decided that he, and not the 12-year-old, was the better of the unqualified people in the room to take charge of the weapon.  He was probably right.  He didn’t know a lot of things and didn’t know what he didn’t know.  So what?

Note also, that he may, or may not have touched the trigger.  Unknown and unknowable at the time was the fact that this family of guns can go full automatic sitting by itself on a tabletop.  There’s also the issue of whether or not he pointed the gun at anyone or if the kid moved in front of where the gun was pointing.  In my studies of 12-year-old boys in emergency situations I have determined that they move around a lot.

The “unknowable” part also speaks to the point of the “buyer beware” arguments.  In addition to the “excluded middle” problems there is the question of whether such omniscience was possible here.  Was the information that these guns were pieces of crap available without recourse to an army of private detectives and lawyers?  How many millions did the manufacturer spend to suppress any such findings?  Were there lots of gun magazine articles about these guns entitled “Wow, are these things ever shitty!”?  If you don’t think that rich corporations can suppress their dirty laundry I suggest you go down to the local Scientology office and shout out that “L. Ron Hubbard was a jerk!”  You might then get an education in how the cash-register-justice system in the US can be used to shut people up.  Even despite that, the most important legal question (although not the only one – see “excluded middle”) of access to information is “Did the manufacturer know?”  Here they did but didn’t care.

I am not a gun snob – there are a lot of great firearms that are affordable. The Bryco ones being affordable, but far from great. I’d take an old, rusted Webley before a Bryco.

@VVelox and @boingboing-9dcb876a03f0d77ea3cee5c9f240c5de:disqus In the event of a pistol or rifle “going full auto”, the ATF usually goes after the user, as they must have done something to make it do that on purpose. Sadly, one poor bastard is in prison right now because his gun was misfiring at a range and someone reported him.

I agree completely.

If there was a serious problem with the Jennings firing FA or continuously firing for no reason, the ATF would be all over it.  

I suspect the owner of the jennings that got shot (along with his wife) did not clean his gun enough or had some unique other issue involved or there would have been more backlash against Jennings for making a gun that just randomly empties its mag for no reason.

There are plenty of perfectly affordable firearms that are safe and there are expensive ones that are complete POS.

For example on the expensive end, the SPAS12 was a great example of a expensive gun that was a POS.

Where as on the cheap end and safe end, you have the AK, SKS, and Mosin Nagants.

That would be a complete abuse of the law as such it is not intentional and as such is a absolutely horrific and disgusting suggestion.

In fact it can happen on any semi-automatic firearm and does not make it a fully automatic firearm. And if the ATF is made aware of a instance, they will do the proper thing and require the person have the firearm restored to a working state.

There are two ways this can happen.

The first method is a slam fire. This happens when a the firing pin sticks and slams into the primer on the freshly loaded cartridge, causing the action the then cycle again.

The second method is when it does not properly disengage, resulting in it firing again. This happens from either wear, poor maintenance, manufacturing defect, or intentional modification.

The only way for it to be considered a fully automatic firearm is via the second being done intentionally, other wise it is a malfunctioning semiautomatic.

1) Bryco makes a POS gun with a shitty design.

2) Brandon’s parents bought a POS gun.  If you buy a $10 skil saw from Harbor Freight, don’t be surprised when it flys off and cuts the dog in half.

3) Brandon’s parents for making the firearm accessible to children.

4) The 12 year old with Brandon and the babysitter who retrieved the firearm because they heard something out side.

5) The babysitter/family-friend-live in (how often does that situation not work out, eh?) Larry Morefold was the final lapse in safety. If you look at it mathematically and the millions of angles and the number of “safe” directions he could have pointed the gun, it takes a fucking moron to point it at the couple of “unsafe” places.

ETA – I am aware there are many good quality firearms that require the safety off to operate and eject the round in the chamber. The venerable Glock requires you to pull the trigger to take it apart. These Bryco guns are small, and not well built. Now, pretty much everyone who has a negligent discharge will swear they didn’t pull the trigger. In some cases they convince themselves 110%. But given this maker’s track record, I am inclined to say the gun failed in some way.

The need to dis-engage the safety to unload it is a horrible argument, especially after a quick search turns up real issues with the weapons they manufactured.

There is no reason one should not be able to load, unload, or carry a weapon with the safety off or with out a safety at all. Any weapon that can’t be is garbage.

It is better to treat it as if it does not exist.

The only time I have seen a weapon go FA without the owner messing with its internal parts is when a lazy dumbass did not clean his gun enough and managed to get enough dirt and grime in his gun that his firing pin was held in the forward position which caused the gun to fire automatically every time the bolt closed. Still technically illegal, but hard to prove intent.

However, this is a complex world, and accidents can have multiple causes. In this case, the two factors identified are: shooter negligence and bad design.

Nobody has said anything to demonstrate that shooter negligence was not a factor, because it almost certainly was. You, in turn, have not said anything to demonstrate that design was not a factor, and cannot; because it almost certainly was.

The Buckmark is extremely popular and has sold like heck.  It is also more likely to be used by younger shooters since it is a balanced, target 22LR.  My father bough me one when I was 13 and I haven’t shot anyone or myself with it.  Mind you, I didn’t have unbridled access to it until I was older.

A more correct analogy with a gun that *requires* the safety be disabled in order to load/unload it would be if the car maker *required* you to unlatch your seat belts in order to drive fast.

“In 2009 a Florida man and his wife were at a firing range, shooting several weapons they owned, including a Bryco handgun.  It had been given to the man by his step-son, who had bought it from a friend.

“The Florida man had just fired it and placed it on its side, barrel pointing down range, on the table in front of him.  Moments later the Bryco fired on its own, repeatedly, spinning as it emptied its entire magazine.  The man and his wife were wounded, as was another man at the range.

“This was not an isolated incident.”

This is not a gun that should be or have ever been on the market if that is one of its failure modes. Suing the company out of existence seems like a net good for humanity. Too bad the slime out-oozed it.

If the gun ever goes off without a direct trigger pull then yes, I think it’s safe to say that’s a defect.

Back to the Jennings, If the parents were smart enough to get a lawyer to go after this company, how could they not have known how crappy the Jennings gun was.  The only way this is possible is if the parents (or whoever owned it) had no knowledge of guns and decided to buy one at random based on price, take it home, load it and let anyone have access to it.

Having grown up around firearms, I can not think of one gun shop or dealer within driving distance that would have sold these guns, not because they are particularly dangerous to the user, but because Jennings guns are not known for quality or for reliability on any level (they are the Yugo or Trabant of guns).  

The only argument I can think of for owning one is that the owner would have to be so poor as to not be able to afford anything of higher quality (like a sock full of rocks).  

The Black Panther argument about Saturday Night specials is a bit misleading.  The guns referred to by that article and by the laws that prevented them does not apply to the Jennings. Saturday Night Specials were guns of even lower quality that came from Europe and Asia and were even cheaper than the Jennings.  They were not outlawed because of “Black People” getting them, rather their importation was outlawed because they were priced so much lower than domestic gun makers could compete with.  The same thing happened with the Chinese made AK-47s, their importation was outlawed because they were much cheaper than similar firearms made by Ruger and Colt here in the USA   In some cases the Chinese guns were 1/3-1/4 the price. So for reasons of “Safety” their importation was outlawed (not possession and not manufacture of the same thing here)

I agree that some people would want to blame the gun maker for the issue with the safety, but at what point does it stop?  Should we sue car makers that allow us to drive fast without our seat belts latched?

I think another reason why this is an issue is that Brandon is still alive.  At any other time in history he would have died and the issue would have gone away.  The level of healthcare we are providing today is amazing and at times sad.  Lives are saved in cases where even a few years ago there would have been nothing that could be done.  Sometimes this leads to very miserable lives (I for one would not want to be saved as with that type of paralysis.  It has also helped our gov keep the numbers of people killed in Iraq and Afghanistan down by keeping them barely alive.

A dead kid is sad, but a kid in a wheelchair with a Tracheotomy and a breathing tube to control his chair is a poster child.

I would love to see Jennings/Brycho or whatever they are calling themselves now go out of business for selling garbage, but it seems there is a market for it… and there will be for some time to come. 

And it’s not as though the article plays on the heartstrings at all. On the contrary, it depicts the injury and the incident that caused it quite clinically. This is not an example of bleeding heart emotionalism, rather a forensic — one might almost say ‘logical’ —examination of the events of the incident and Bryco’s criminal irresponsibility.

Too bad the kid wasn’t successful. Taking one of these junk gun makers out of the market could have done a lot of good. Those who didn’t read the article (I don’t blame you) should understand that the gun in this case was defective to the point where accidental discharge was almost certain – an inherently unsafe design. Just like a car that flips going around a corner at 30mph or a diet pill that causes liver failure, manufacturers of these products have to be responsible for the damage they cause so that they take proper care in design and preventing potential accidents.