From Courthouse News:
In a federal lawsuit filed in New Jersey on Tuesday, Smith & Wesson claims New Jersey Attorney General Gurbir Grewal has tried everything in his power to stymie gun sales, and that he is now sifting through decades of company advertisements and marketing materials in an extra-legal attempt to restrict the right to bear arms.
In October, Grewal filed administrative subpoenas seeking evidence of fraudulent advertising from the gun manufacturer. The subpoenas request documentation related to advertisements that claim firearms make a home safer, an untrained homeowner could use a Smith & Wesson firearm safely and effectively to defend his home, and whether guns enhance one's lifestyle.
"The Subpoena presents no legitimate inquiry into any purported fraud, and instead targets mere opinions and other protected statements allegedly made by Smith & Wesson," the company claims. It seeks a court order enjoining the subpoenas and declaring them unconstitutional.
Citing 248 million results in Google searches of "do guns make you safer" as proof that many Americans believe firearms make them safer, Smith & Wesson says New Jersey's false advertisement subpoenas should be a dead-end legal theory.
I damn near ROFL'd when I read that the firearm manufacturer cited people asking a question in a Google Search as proof that somehow the answer was self-evident and objectively ruled in their favor.
Spoiler alert: there is absolutely no objective statistical evidence that guns make people safer. For every piece of affirmative data you'll find, there are a dozen more instances, mostly with even more robust statistics, demonstrating the self-fulfilling risks of firearm ownership. I say this not because I'm in favor of a gun ban—I'm actually not—but because I've spent a lot of time with gun data, and I believe in the god damn truth. And the truth is that the Pandora's Box of firearm ownership has been open for far too long to close, and that all guns actually do is make people feel safer. (For some reason, the "facts don't care about your feelings crowd" has repeatedly refused to apply their own logic to their beloved Second Amendment.)
Also, let's be honest: the Second Amendment is comprised of 4 dependent clauses, separated by commas, and is grammatically nonsensical unless you remove half of those clauses. In other words, the English language has an anti-Second Amendment agenda.
Smith & Wesson Sues New Jersey Over 'Anti-Second Amendment Agenda' [Nick Rummell / Courthouse News]
Image: Public Domain via PxHere
