First Amendment Facade

    Years ago, a lawsuit against the Ku Klux Klan found the haven for bigots guilty of promoting violence.

   The court ordered the Klan to pay victims of their violence many millions of dollars. So many that the Klan was unable to raise the money and so it went bankrupt and disbanded.

  This year, a lawsuit against the Remington firearms company found the gun maker liable for the deaths of children at a school in Connecticut, and the court ordered the firm to compensate the families with millions of dollars.

 The gun lobby had been successful for decades in fending off lawsuits on the ground that manufacturers were not responsible for the actions of gun buyers, and besides, the Constitution guarantees "the right of the people to keep and bear arms." This ignores the first phrase of the Second Amendment, which cites "a well organized militia" as a basis for gun ownership.

  The shooter in Connecticut was not a member of a militia, well organized or otherwise, and there was some question as to whether his gun ownership was legal.

  Current news media report dozens of people shot and killed in American cities every day, yet little is said about strengthening gun laws, especially in major cities, to prevent the many thousands of people on the fringes of society from acquiring -- often illegally -- military style weapons that result in multiple killings.

   Defenders insist they need these weapons in case of foreign invasion. Apparently they don't trust the U.S. military, or police in major cities like Philadelphia.

  But now that a court has found a gun maker liable when its product is used in a mass killing of children, it may well mean that particular firm will be unable to pay the fine and it will go out of business, just as the KKK became defunct after it was found responsible for racially motivated killings in the South.

   Certainly there are flaws in American society, and in the laws that its representative enact.

  The answer is to fix the flaws, not cover them up in the name of preserving unity.

  But.

  Unity for all or just a dominant-hungry few?