In with a rat-tat-tat, out with barely a whimper. That describes the great lawsuit filed by Chicago not even four months ago. The suit, originally filed in state court was transferred to federal court. And with a very short, two sentence filing, Chicago voluntarily withdrew the lawsuit from federal court.
CWB Chicago, as usual, reported on Chicago eating some humble pie.
CHICAGO — When Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson announced in March that his administration was filing a “first-of-its-kind lawsuit” against firearm manufacturer Glock, the city drummed up publicity with a press release and widespread media coverage.
There was no press release and no media coverage on Monday when the city’s attorneys unceremoniously dropped the case in a two-sentence federal court filing.
Chicago and its top-shelf lawyer buddies over at Everytown for Gun Control hailed it as a “first of a kind” lawsuit claiming that Glock pistols posed a public nuisance because criminals misuse them. The announcement back on March 19, 2024, attracted all sorts of national headlines happily parroting Chicago’s sensational claims.
Moreover, the usual menagerie of gun control advocates cheered the fake news. “Good job, Mr. Mayor,” the ever-shrinking Chicago Tribune editorialized at the move.
Here it is, from Chicago Mayor Let’s Go Brandon’s mouth press room:
CHICAGO – Today, the City of Chicago announced a first-of-its-kind lawsuit against Glock, the manufacturer of the most popular handguns in the United States, alleging that Glock is facilitating the proliferation of illegal machine guns on the streets of Chicago. The lawsuit alleges that Glock unreasonably endangers Chicagoans by manufacturing and selling in the Chicago civilian market semiautomatic pistols that can easily be converted to illegal machine guns with an auto sear – a cheap, small device commonly known as a “Glock switch.” The suit is the first to use Illinois’s new Firearms Industry Responsibility Act, passed and signed into law in 2023 to hold gun companies accountable for conduct that endangers the public.
Filed earlier today in Cook County Circuit Court, the lawsuit reports that law enforcement personnel in Chicago have recovered over 1,100 Glocks that have been converted into illegal machine guns in the last two years alone in connection with a wide variety of crimes, including homicides, aggravated assaults, batteries, kidnappings, burglaries, home invasions, carjackings, and attempted robberies. The lawsuit alleges that Glock knows it could fix the problem but refuses to do so, and the City is seeking a court order requiring Glock to cease sales of its easily converted pistols to Chicago civilians. The City also seeks penalties against Glock and damages for the harm that Glock has caused to the City.
“The City of Chicago is encountering a deadly new frontier in the gun violence plaguing our communities because of the increase of fully automatic Glocks on our streets,” said Mayor Brandon Johnson, a member of Mayors Against Illegal Guns. “Selling firearms that can so easily be converted into automatic weapons makes heinous acts even more deadly, so we are doing everything we can in collaboration with others committed to ending gun violence to hold Glock accountable for putting profits over public safety.”
“Right now, anyone in the United States with $20 and a screwdriver can convert their Glock pistol into an illegal machine gun in just a few minutes,” said Eric Tirschwell, executive director of Everytown Law.“We intend to hold Glock accountable for the unconscionable decision to continue selling its easily modified pistols even though it could fix the problem, knowing that by refusing to do so it is exacerbating gun violence in Chicago.”
“We are proud to partner with the City of Chicago and Everytown Law in this vital effort to enhance public safety and create a safer Chicago for all its residents,” said H. Christopher Boehning, partner at Paul, Weiss, Rifkind, Wharton & Garrison LLP.
Yes, Everytown’s Law division website literally couldn’t contain their glee in the filing.
The page, still up as of July 24, 2024, shows a screaming headline that won’t even fit on at the top of their page.
In with a rat tat tat, out with barely a whimper
In recent days, in a move barely mentioned (if at all) in most of those same media outlets, Chicago dropped their lawsuit. In fact, the great ground-breaking lawsuit, filed with the help of the very best legal minds (cough) over at Everytown, was withdrawn in a two sentence filing.
In reality, the lawsuit filed in March of this year proved nothing new. It was just another poorly rehashed lawfare action against a respected firearm manufacturer that produces some of the most popular defensive handguns sold in America and elsewhere in the world. Glock products have saved countless lives when used in self-defense and to put down violent criminals, terrorists and lunatics. They have also thwarted millions of criminal attacks.
But Chicago politicians needed to do something to distract from their feckless leadership and the failure of gun control schemes to stop criminals. After all, gun control disarms victims, not criminals. And when the victims are unarmed and defenseless, the criminals can ply their trade with impunity, particularly when prosecutors don’t prosecute and judges don’t incarcerate offenders.
Right along those lines, the same legal beagles re-filed the the withdrawn case once more in state court, only this time they’ve added a couple of Glock authorized gun shops as defendants. Yes, Eagle Sports and Midwest Sporting Goods now get to spend tens of thousands of dollars defending against a defective lawsuit. At least until Brandon’s legal team files another two sentence voluntary dismissal.
Does anyone want to take a bet that this latest filing will meet the same end, perhaps even sooner than the original filings?
No, not out with a whimper. This was a tactical move to get the case out of federal court and back into state court. That is why local gun stores were added. Under the federal jurisdiction rules, an out of state defendant sued in state court can have the case removed to federal court as long as there are no in-state (non-diverse) defendants. Here, Chicago has added non-diverse defendants to prevent Glock from removing the case to federal court. Presumably it believes that the state courts in Chicago will be more amenable to its arguments and ignore the PLCAA.
SAD
BUT HOPEFULL
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Somebody should sue Oral-B for designing their toothbrushes in such a way to enable justice impacted individuals to shape them to a point on their cell floor and jam them into anothers throat.
Maybe somebody should sue Joy Reid and Reid Hoffman for calling the attempted assassination of Trump a staged event. I believe the going sum for that sort of act is one billion dollars.
I hope they do the precedent is clearly set now.
“Top shelf” lawyers at everytown… your sarcasm isn’t lost upon me.
they refiled the suit to include two gun stores. It’s gotten worse.
Yep. I would THINK Boch knew that? Oh Netanyahu is getting thunderous applause in Congress🙂
Everything Gun Control zealots do circles back to the insane Racist Roots of Gun Control…Everything.
Video looked fun. Would like to see how it handled with no stock though. I’d imagine not very well
“Would like to see how it handled with no stock though.”
Watch the video again, genius, it’s towards the end…
Sorry smart guy, i didn’t watch all the way obviously. Dont letcha panties get to scrunched
The only person I’ve seen to control it well without a stock was “Jerry Miculek”. He put the rounds on target.
This is gonna end up with Glock doing some sort of stupid “Hillary hole” esque thing. Mark my words. Even if they put something in to block the sear from going in, people who did this sort of thing would just use a dremel to cut it out.
I’m surprised no one else makes these for non-Glocks though tbh. If it were legal I’d probably make one for something goofy like my XD or SD9VE or something.
A safety would be useless. All one has to disengage the safety and its off to the races. There would have to be something like a magazine interlock that would prevent the gun from firing if a glock switch was installed, and I suspect that is impossible.
they withdrew it so they could file it in a state circuit/district Court to bring additional targets into it and to keep it out of federal courts longer by making it more difficult to impossible to appeal in the federal court system.
Cam Edwards had the rest of the story yesterday
Note that Gov. Pritzker financed the campaigns of two of the Illinois state supreme court justices to the tune of $1,000,000 each, half of that contributed by one of his trust funds to get around state campaign contribution limits. That’s two out of a total of seven.
Most people wouldn’t call such a thing a campaign contribution. I think most would think the word would to start with a B and end with be.
Simple.
Stop selling/servicing Glocks for Illinois LEOs until this goes away.
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