A 17-year-old quadriplegic boy from California wants to buy, and then close, the company that produced the weapon that injured him. A jury handed Brandon Maxfield a $51 million verdict in his lawsuit against the gun manufacturer for producing a product that supposedly had a defective safety design.
Bankruptcy court could rule on his bid within 20 days.
Attempting to buy the plant with $175,000 in donations, and then melting down the 70,000 unassembled guns, is much easier than blaming Mom, Dad and the live-in baby sitter.
Maxfield was 7 years old when the sitter, a 20-year-old man who was living with the family, paralyzed the boy by shooting him in the chin with the family's .38-caliber gun. The parents bought the semi-automatic at a pawn shop.
The jury determined that the manufacturer only was 10 percent responsible, the distributors and pawn shop, 38 percent.
However, the jury placed the rest of the blame where it all should have been -- on the adults in his tortured life. To their credit, the three admitted they were at fault.
When a 20-year-old -- who had taken a gun safety class -- handles a semi-automatic in a room with Maxfield, his two younger siblings and their 12-year-old relative, any argument about a faulty design is pointless.
A defective gun did not cause this horrible tragedy. It was caused by defective adults.
