Gun victim plans takeover revenge on manufacturer

[papau]

Will Gun maker Bryco -a highly successful gun manufacturer, two of whose weapons were in the top 10 firearms listed by the US government in a report in 2000 on guns used in crime - survive? Seems there is a loophole in the protection of gun makers - while they are exempted from US consumer safety controls (manufacturers cannot be prosecuted or fined by the state for breaches), they can, as in this case, be sued by individual plaintiffs.


http://www.guardian.co.uk/usguns/Story/0,2763,1239748,00.html

Gun victim plans takeover revenge on manufacturer

Dan Glaister
Wednesday June 16, 2004
The Guardian

A teenager paralysed by a gun accident 10 years ago is planning to buy the company that makes the weapon fired in the incident at a bankruptcy auction tomorrow. Brandon Maxfield, now 17, was left paralysed when a babysitter fired a handgun owned by his parents.

Last year a jury awarded him $51m (£27.8m) damages, of which the gun manufacturer was made liable for $23m.

The following day Bryco Arms filed for bankruptcy. But the Maxfields' lawyers became suspicious when a $150,000 bid to buy the company was made by a former plant foreman. At the same time as Bruce Jennings, the owner of Bryco, declared that he planned to retire from the business, his wife applied for a firearms sales licence.

Mr Maxfield is appealing on a website (brandonsarms.org) for donations to help him buy the company, which specialises in cheap firearms known as "Saturday night specials".

He plans to melt down the stock of 60,000 unassembled guns and close the company. <snip>

[FeebMaster]

1. There's a thread on it around here somewhere.

If the brandonsarms people buy the company, will that make them part of the corrupt gun industry?

[papau]

2. if they melt it down - maybe a scrap metal company!

:-)

[FeebMaster]

5. Would a corrupt member of the gun industry

that later went into the scrap metal business become a corrupt scrap metal company? Is the scrap metal industry corrupt or just its individual members?

[TX-RAT]

3. They were shit guns anyway.

[iverglas]

4. here's the previous thread

http://www.democraticunderground.com/discuss/duboard.php?az=show_mesg&forum=118&topic_id=64027&mesg_id=64027

for anyone who missed it, or is nostalgic.

[TexasMexican]

6. "Bryco -a highly successful gun manufacturer"

admitidly I have no idea how much money they are making, but I dont think most people who know anything about guns would consider them a "highly successful gun manufacturer."

Glock, Colt, Springfield Armory, those are highly successful gun manufacturers, not some company that makes shity little guns.

btw if they are bankrupt they certainly arent successful.

[iverglas]

7. gettin' it

if they are bankrupt they certainly arent successful.

Uh ... they aren't. They are declaring bankruptcy to avoid paying a judgment. It's a pretty common tactic. Anti-choice organizations in the US are fond of it, I've heard.

From the little I've read, I gather that the company's secured creditors (the ones who are entitled to get their money before anybody else gets anything) are essentially -- well, is essentially -- the owner. He gets his money back out, his wife uses it to buy the company, something like that. He may be evil, but he ain't stupid.