The company chose to settle rather than allow discovery of internal documents on how they marketed their assault weapons. What does that tell you about how they marketed those weapons?
The answer – given the large settlement despite the laws shielding them – is pretty clear. Irresponsibly. That’s how.
Tidewater News and Opinion Forum 
If you read the article, you would see that this was a decision by the product liability insurers, not Remington, so your speculation on Remington’s motives is meaningless.
Insurers will often choose a settlement in preference to risking an emotion-based jury award regardless of the facts of a case.
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“If you read the article. . .”
Actually, I could not read the article. I do not subscribe. But if I had linked to similar reports at NYT and WAPO that is all that people like you would see. So, I shared this breaking news via WSJ.
Whoever made the decision to settle for $73 Million, it was with the expectation of doing MUCH worse if all the facts were known to a jury. And, whoever made the decision, it is good news. It will have the beneficial effect of making companies in the business of selling these things behave more responsibly.
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Here’s a link you can read
WSJ Free link
You will see that Remington went bankrupt over unrelated issues and has been broken up into smaller companies. So the original company doesn’t even exist to make a decision.
In today’s climate, once a judge allows a suit to progress, juries often make emotional, irrational decisions and insurers don’t like to roll the dice.
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Well, thanks for that. It changes nothing to my mind. The insurers had access to the records subject to discovery. They decided to settle for a huge amount. Even though gun manufacturers enjoy significant protection from liability torts. Any “emotional” decision that a jury makes that is not lawful can be rejected by the judge. It happens all the time.
But, in any case, it is a good news story for the families and for the public. You have often stated that insurers are better than government regulators for controlling bad behavior in the market. Have you changed your mind?
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Well, I was thinking more along the lines of Underwriter’s Laboratory for preventing bad drugs from getting to market. but even so, leaving such matters to insurers after-the-fact is still better than government.
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Come now, we all know assault weapons cannot be marketed to the public, only military. Unless of course you are too stupid to know what one is or you falsely on purpose claim a gun that isn’t one is one to LIE and sensationalize. Which are you, stupid or a liar or both?
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“Which are you, stupid or a liar or both?”
Neither.
With that said, I will admit to being less than perfect in many ways, but at least I have not had to get my “man license” renewed.
Whatever you want to call military-style AR-15s that can be equipped with huge magazines and bump stocks, the fact is that they ARE marketed to the public. Yes, a sad and inadequate portion of the public, but still, the public.
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A smart car with a Lamborghini body is no more a race car than a semi-auto rifle is a military style or assault weapon. The first is a smamborghini and the second is a semi-auto rifle.
Maybe you should consider a new man license to know the differences…
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Uh, you are just playing with words. And ignoring the facts about what AR-15s are capable of.
Sixty dead and 411 wounded in Las Vegas (2017) ought to shut even you up about these imaginary distinctions between sporting weapons and murder weapons. But obviously it did not.
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It’s illegal to hunt deer in VA with a .223 cartridge because it is insufficiently lethal to insure quick kills.
In battle, it is better to wound an opposing soldier than to kill him.
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A semiautomatic rifle, like an AR-15, can fire about 40 rounds a minute. A magazine change would take a few seconds if practiced, maybe a bit more if not. Larger capacity magazines are an advantage in mass shootings.
Fully auto is not practical unless we’ll trained and even then, short bursts are better for accuracy.
Bump stocks give greater RPM but at a cost of both accuracy and overheating in semiautomatic versions if I recall correctly.
Point is that the mass sales of AR-15’s to untrained civilians may not be the smartest thing we should be doing. I have always felt that anyone should at least be able to establish competency in firearms before buying. After all, a “well trained militia” isn’t well trained by virtue of the right to bear arms.
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The Parkland shooter used an AR, but he only had 10 round magazines.
I don’t know of any mass shooting, other than the Las Vegas one, where there was any difference in the outcome due to magazine size. Magazine size makes a difference only when someone is shooting back.
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“Magazine size makes a difference only when someone is shooting back.”
That is absolutely absurd.
To begin with you simply dismiss the evidence of Las Vegas which was proof positive that those oversized magazines can convert DIRECTLY into higher casualties.
You also ignore the evidence of Sandy Hook where the death toll was surely increased by the 10 thirty round magazines the killer brought with him. Those 300 rounds in thirty 10 round magazines would be far more difficult to manage and reload.
Then there is the general case. No matter how skilled at changing mags, a person with a thirty or hundred round magazine can kill more people in a given amount of time than someone with 10 round magazines. More than one mass shooter has been stopped and/or people escaped when he got to the end of a magazine. The best known might be the right-wing fanatic shooting up a Gabby Gifford rally in Tuscon.
https://abcnews.go.com/Politics/patricia-maisch-describes-stopping-gunman-reloading/story?id=12577933
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RE: “What does that tell you about how they marketed those weapons?”
It tells me nothing, since there was no disclosure.
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It may tell YOU nothing, but anyone with any sense understands that the decision to pay out $73 million is an extraordinarily strong indicator that their marketing practices were irresponsible and culpable. How do we know that? Because gun manufacturers are very seriously protected from liability by law IF they behave responsibly. Any “emotional” decision that a jury might make would be tossed by a judge if it were unlawful. So, they settled rather than have the facts known.
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RE: “anyone with any sense understands that the decision to pay out $73 million is an extraordinarily strong indicator that their marketing practices were irresponsible and culpable.”
In other words, you want your own private inference to be accepted as fact. Anyone with any sense understands your gambit is ridiculous.
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I expressed my opinion. In short, it was that the fact of a huge settlement is evidence that the marketing practices were culpable in some way. It was based on the commonsense idea that people do not give up millions of dollars without compelling reasons. Whoever decided to settle had a full view of the evidence that would come out in a trial. They looked at it and decided to pay. You need not draw any conclusion from those facts. I did.
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Like I said, your conclusions are not substantial. You are playing a game of inferences.
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Do you have any evidence that the Sandy Hook shooter had ever seen that ad?
I never saw it.
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I suppose you are referring to that “get your man license renewed” campaign clearly targeted at manhood challenged losers? Did that particular campaign reach Adam Lanza? I don’t know. Nobody does.
Nor do I know what it was about their marketing that the company and/or its insurers believed would make them lose the case. But it was something that a jury would take seriously, or they would not have settled for such an amount.
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Juries with a desire to make ‘someone’ pay often seize on who is available without too much regard for actual culpability.
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And judges can and do override them if they go too far.
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