Utah gun dealer's persecution not over

Back in January, I wrote about the legal ordeals inflicted on Wesley Wayne Hill, a Utah gun dealer who sold the shotgun used in the Trolley Square mall killings in Salt Lake City last year. As I stated in the earlier post, the minor paperwork errors (or "crimes," according to the BATFE) committed by Mr. Hill played no meaningful role in that atrocity, but Mr. Hill has nonetheless been sentenced to a year of probation.

Today, we learn that the probation is not the extent of the suffering to be inflicted on Mr. Hill--he is also being sued.

Stacy Hanson is suing Nevada-based Rocky Mountain Enterprises and a pawn shop chain it owns, Sportsman's Fastcash, [and Mr. Hill is also named in the suit] for emotional and physical damages he and his wife incurred after the Feb. 12, 2007, shootings, according to documents filed in 3rd District Court today.

"I think that people who sell firearms need to be held to a higher level of responsibility. Guns do one thing: They're made to kill things," said Hanson, reached at his home on this evening.

Guns are "made to kill things"? That's funny--I have several that have never killed anything--are they defective? In fact, there are tens of millions of guns in the United States that have never killed anything--you'd think that if that's what they're made to do, they'd do a better job of it.

We live in a litigious society, of course, and I suppose I shouldn't be surprised that when something horrible happens, someone will decide that the horrible event entitles him to demand money from someone else. What I find less pardonable, though, is trying to wrap the money-grubbing in a cloak of nobility:

"I think I owe something to the people who died," he said of pursuing legal action against the gun sellers.

"I made it out of there. I think this is one of those things that I can do to help their memories."

Yeah, pal--your newfound wealth will be just the way to honor the people who died.

It's not that I don't sympathize with a man who has been paralyzed and confined to a wheelchair--being in the same boat myself (although not due to gunshot wounds), I am intimately familiar with how unpleasant it is. My objection is to the fact that he has decided to transfer the blame for his suffering to a man who did nothing to cause it.

The suit claims the pistol-grip shotgun doesn't serve a purpose other than for "military, law enforcement or criminal activities," and the gun dealer should have known Talovic would use the gun for murder.

Apparently, self-defense is a criminal activity now.

"It's the right thing to do whether it succeeds or whether it fails," said Hanson of the lawsuit.

"I'm doing it for here and for Omaha, Virginia Tech and every place else."

And for your bottom line, and your lawyer's.

Does anyone know if there's a legal defense fund for Mr. Hill?