Above the law no more

Connecticut’s Supreme Court did the brave and correct thing Thursday when it sided with the families of first graders murdered by a young man wielding an AR-15 in Newtown, vindicating their rights to sue the firearm’s manufacturer, Remington, for potentially breaking state law.

A 2005 federal law gives gunmakers and dealers immunity from liability claims over gun violence. Thanks to aggressive litigation and rotten rulings, the bad statute has turned into an all-purpose shield, even when a manufacturer may flagrantly violate state statutes against irresponsible marketing by, say, targeting troubled teenagers and implicitly encouraging them to use their products to commit crimes.

As the four-judge majority put it: “We are confident... that if there were credible allegations that a firearms seller had run explicit advertisements depicting and glorifying school shootings, and promoted its products in video games, such as ‘School Shooting,’ that glorify and reward such unlawful conduct, and if a troubled young man who watched those advertisements and played those games were inspired thereby to commit a terrible crime like the ones involved in the Sandy Hook massacre, then even the most ardent sponsors of” the federal law “would not have wanted to bar a consumer protection lawsuit seeking to hold the supplier accountable for the injuries wrought by such unscrupulous marketing practices.”

Amen.