ILLINOIS - In today's litigious society, where someone is always looking for a way to take something someone else has, a state agency has now been targeted for just such a thing.
And we're kinda torn about it here.
As was announced this morning in articles like this one in the Chicago Tribune, the Illinois State Police has been sued by one of the survivors of the February 15 shooting incident that claimed the lives of five individuals.
From the article, this snip:
Timothy Williams, an employee at Henry Pratt Co., was shot three times after his colleague Gary Martin — a felon who should not have been able to buy a gun — opened fire Feb. 15, according to lawsuit. Williams still has two bullets lodged in his back, while a third bullet shattered a bone in his right arm.
He is seeking $2 million.
“The claimant has experienced, and will experience, pain, suffering, disability, loss of a normal life, medical expenses, lost earnings and a loss of earning capacity, all because of the injuries suffered due to the ISP’s negligence,” the lawsuit states. “Many of claimant’s losses are permanent.”
As you can see, Williams has put ISP in a bad spot: He's blaming them for not doing due diligence in their investigation into shooter Gary Martin's application to buy a weapon under Illinois' draconian gun ownership laws.
Nobody's pointing out that if Martin had really wanted a gun, even if he'd been denied a purchase through a thorough background check, he could've gotten one illegally; apparently that's easy to do in upstate Illinois.
The "bad spot" we reference is that now, ISP, tasked with ensuring that a person who wants to exercise his or her Second Amendment right to keep and bear arms (but which has been endlessly abrogated in Illinois) has a Firearm Owner's Identification card as well as has a "clean" background check upon purchase of any weapon, has to defend this miss of Martin's background...and any use of this incident (along with the one that occurred yesterday) to continue to abrogate our rights under the Second is going to be seen as, well....flimsy. That's because even with all these safeguards in place, Martin was still able to do what he did...five people are still dead, others injured, and "efforts" to stop it failed, leading people to conclude that if the criminally-minded want to commit a crime, they're gonna do it, regardless of laws.
We've little doubt that Illinois' libwhack legislators, however, will continue to try to suppress our 2A rights, and will use these shootings as the reason to do so. Watch and see. We recommend you watch and see from another state, however, as this one is being ruined by the day.